Introduction and objectives

Sage X3 Product design provides an engineer with a sandbox environment in which they can develop, in isolation, a design for a new product, or a new assembly, introduce that design revision into stock as a new product, build a "prototype" of that design, then release the "best" design revision as an "official" product.

Product design BOMs contain structured information for making a product. Product design BOMs, however, are designed independently from in-production, and from subcontracted bills of materials (BOMs), and assemblies. As for in-production, and for subcontracted BOMs, product design BOMs define an assembly that can ultimately become a finished product, made up of subassemblies, product design BOMs as subassemblies, and components. Any number of subassemblies can exist in a product design BOM component list. Each subassembly will itself have a list of components, and this list can also contain subassemblies. Progressing in this way you can create multiple levels of assembly below the final assembly (the design product).

Sage X3 Product design follows a revision management approach, which is critical for managing the design of a new product, or assembly. This approach not only provides efficient means for testing compliance to the design throughout the development process, but provides a continuous means of assessing and tracking changes to the design from changes to components, changes to regulations, and from customer requirements. New, altered, alternative and deactivated designs are managed by specific user roles at each stage of the design process.

Sage X3 Product design targets the manufacturing sector. It has the capacity to organize designs and revisions, and create new product and component stock records, all of which can include images, and circuit and drawing references. "Real-time" costing optimizes designs with costs, providing an easy comparison between multiple revisions as development of a product progresses. Sage X3 Product design provides the functionality therefore, to plan, to develop and manage designs, and to track, and test designs to achieve the finished product.

By providing visibility and control of your designs, Sage X3 Product design will reduce complexity, save you time, and provide efficiency improvements throughout the development process.

Limitations

Sage X3 Product design does not currently provide the following functionality:

• Automated product design revision numbers.
• Automated advancement of the status through the design and approval cycles. Design and approval statuses must be set manually following reasonable business logic and common sense.
• Testing a product design BOM revision in a "pilot" phase using sales orders, before "releasing" a product design for global production.

This functionality will be available in a future release of Sage X3.