Parts Library
ION allows you to keep track of your parts as well as keep track of how and where you use those parts in your manufacturing program.
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ION allows you to keep track of your parts as well as keep track of how and where you use those parts in your manufacturing program.
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Part objects in ION represent abstractions that carry information about a particular part, while the physical parts themselves are . The part objects dictate the mBOM, revision, supplier part number, tracking type, lead time, unit of measure, and other additional attributes about a part that get carried over to your factory. A part is a unique combination of Part Number and Revision.
A part represents a unique combination of parts and processes that can exist as a standalone product in your inventory. We recommend creating a part if it meets the following criteria:
An instance of that part (i.e., part inventory) can be stored in a warehouse.
An instance of that part can be used interchangeably across any serial number of one assembly or be used in multiple types of assemblies (i.e., different part numbers).
Here are example use cases:
A part comes in unpainted (i.e., -001) and can be used for R&D, or can be coated (i.e., -002) and used for flight purposes. This part meets both criteria; it can be stored in a warehouse, and the part can be used for R&D or Flight if coated. In this case, we do recommend the -002 calls out the -001 in the mBOM.
A car engine that is stored in inventory and can be used for any sedan serial number that comes down the line.
Paint that is used for any vehicle, whether it's a sedan or a SUV.
When we DO NOT recommend creating a part:
If every part always gets painted, than we don't recommend a unique part number for the unpainted part. If the unpainted part is ordered from a supplier, we recommend using the Outside Processing feature to support this use case!
You need to break up a large procedure into smaller segments to effectively split up the procedure definition into multiple teams and more manageable chunks. Instead of creating unique part numbers for each procedure to represent each state of the assembly, we recommend using .
ION is intentionally flexible when it comes to part revisions, given that every customer has a different schema. In order to set your revision schema, navigate to the parts organization settings and set the format of the revision schema.
You can set the schema to allow overflow, which defines whether an error should be raised when the max iteration of a revision scheme is reached, or if it should overflow to the next available value. For example, you can determine if Z is the last revision in an alphabetical revision schema, or if it should overflow to AA.
The default boolean will automatically mark all newly created parts with this revision scheme unless overriden.
If no revision or revision schema is given, then the part defaults to Rev A. If a revision schema is given, then the part defaults to the first value of that revision schema.
When archiving a part, ION will prevent any new inventory of that part from being created. Existing inventory will remain unaffected by archiving a part. This will also remove archived parts from dropdowns (i.e. part selection on a run or purchase order). You may unarchive a part by finding them using this filter on the parts library page.
A revision can be generated from any part, there are no restrictions requiring the revision to be generated from the current latest revision. For example if our part "ion-13" has existing revisions A and B, then a third revision C can be generated from either existing revision A or B. unless explicitly overridden in the mutation input. The new revision will be the next valid alphabetic character from the part's latest revision. If the part's latest revision is C, then the new revision will be D. If the part's latest revision is Z, then the new revision will be AA. Returns the newly created part object with the updated revision.
