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IPC PDX Standards, RosettaNet PIPs Support Flexible Supply Chain Relationships
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
In today's distributed manufacturing environment, efficient exchange of product data — from design through manufacturing, and even end of life disposition — is increasingly important to a cost-effective supply chain.
By Barbara Goldstein and Richard Kubin
Common formats, transfer protocols and exchange mechanisms help trading partners connect and transact business, taking full advantage of flexible supply chain relationships.
The IPC Product Data eXchange (PDX) standards, and the related RosettaNet e-business process standards were developed to provide interoperability between diverse systems, shortening the time and cost of establishing partnerships. To evolve to meet the industry's changing needs, development of PDX 2.0 has begun. Among its new features will be the ability to track material composition data.
This article provides an overview of the current PDX standards and related RosettaNet standards, includes examples of industry adoption, and discusses the en-hancements of PDX 2.0, which focuses on environmental tracking capabilities.
PDX standards are simple and XML-based, and facilitate exchange of bills of materials (BOM), approved manufacturer lists (AML), engineering change orders (ECO), as-built configuration and quality information among OEMs, EMS providers and suppliers. The specifications were developed by a National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI) project team that involved broad industry participation. IPC — Association Connecting Electronics Industries published the resulting standards.
The four standards that comprise the PDX suite (IPC-2571, -2576, -2577 and -2578) help companies manage end-to-end processes that extend outside of their companies and across multiple supply chain tiers.
Three PDX standards were released in late 2001. The fourth, IPC-2577, is in final draft form and awaiting industry input. Specifications for PDX and other supply chain communication standards are available at http://webstds.ipc.org/.
In developing PDX, NEMI and IPC worked closely with RosettaNet, a consortium dedicated to development and rapid deployment of open Internet-based business standards. The PDX standards were integrated into RosettaNet's Cluster 2 and Cluster 7 Partner Interface Processes (PIPs), relating to distribution and updates of production information and the exchange of technical data for manufacturing. RosettaNet standards are being deployed to support technical product and component data exchange.
Figure 1. PDX provides a standard format with which to communicate product structure and content data across the value chain, from design through end of life.
Several OEMs, including HP and Lucent Technologies and EMS providers such as Celestica, Flextronics, Sanmina-SCI Corp. and Solectron Corp. are supporting the use of PDX standards and/or the related Ro-settaNet PIPs. Approximately 95 percent of one OEM's outbound transactions and 65 percent of inbound ones use the PDX standards. The company is using PDX for all exchanges not involving direct CAD access.
As the OEM reengineered its supply chain in 2001 and moved to a virtual manufacturing model, aligning on a single process and tool to manage its product content data became critical. In 2002, PDX was chosen as the format for migrating data from an internal CAD/DDM tool. Older legacy product data was vaulted in PDX format, and PDX was also used to load active product data into the new PDM tool for change management and data transfer. PDX also was chosen as the output format for internally developed interfaces from ECAD and PDM tools.
Figure 2. A representation of a BOM item in standard PDX format. Rather than providing information in a spreadsheet or proprietary format, PDX allows a single, neutral agreed-upon structure and format for BOM data.
Approximately 16 of one Tier One EMS company's customers or customer divisions transmit PDX packages, and the company processes about 650 PDX packages per month.
The EMS company's PDM automates the data receipt process and provides data in a standard format to internal engineering and supply chain functional areas. PDX allows for a high level of integration between the company's systems and those of its customers. PDX also allows new customers' information to be interpreted automatically and accurately.
Similarly, the EMS provider has implemented RosettaNet PIPs with many of its customers, primarily in support of automating purchase orders, invoices and shipment notification processes.
Agile Software provides a PDX viewer that allows companies to receive and interpret PDX files, regardless of their in-house IT infrastructure.The viewer is popular with small suppliers, since it allows interpretation of PDX data received from customers without having to construct and maintain their own tool suite. The PDX viewer can be downloaded from http://www.myagile.com/eservices/express/.
The revised suite of PDX.standards will include capability for BOM-level costing, role-based access, enhanced multi-site support, data archiving and BOM-level material composition data. PDX 2.0 also will take advantage of new advances in XML technology.
BOM-level costing will allow manufacturers to track lifecycle costs associated with a product, and will include not only component purchase prices but also associated machine setup and training costs related to a particular build. Role-based access will enable PDX users to specify security and access restrictions for different sub-assemblies of a product. Enhanced multi-site support will improve PDX's ability to communicate product information with globally distributed production.
Perhaps the most compelling reason for revising the PDX suite of standards is inclusion of material composition data to enable manufacturers to attach material content information directly to BOM components. The European Union's WEEE Directive, which becomes effective in August 2005 and the RoHS Directive, in effect July 2006 will affect the entire worldwide value chain.
A standard approach to materials composition declarations, including data collection and exchange, will reduce the cost and complexity of compliance and make a better process for the overall supply chain.
Material composition data currently is exchanged primarily through e-mail and spreadsheets. This is difficult to scale and automate. Standardized data exchange formats and protocols are required to support industry requirements across the supply chain. PDX 2.0 is being developed with this in mind.
The Electronics Industries Alliance (EIA), the European Industry Association (EICTA) and the Japan Green Procurement Survey Standardization Initiative (JGPSSI) have been working to define the requirements for materials declaration. These groups have drafted a document — the Joint Industry Guide for Material Composition Declaration (http://www.eia.org/resources/2003-09-19.10.pdf) — that establishes the materials and substances that, if present in products and subparts, must be disclosed by suppliers.
Industry still must define standard business processes around legislative requirements, identify information content requirements, and define and develop international standards for data content, formats and exchange protocols that will allow these processes to be optimized and automated.
NEMI recently initiated the Material Composition Data Exchange Project, which is working with international standards bodies to help define and validate standards for the exchange of material composition data between all elements of the value chain and across the entire product lifecycle to support WEEE and RoHS requirements.
The project ultimately hopes to develop an industry consensus on standardized content for material composition declaration consistent with the Joint Industry Guide, define requirements for PDX 2.0 extensions to include material composition information, and work with RosettaNet to establish standardized PIPs for data query and exchange.
Conclusion
As efficient data exchange becomes increasingly important to competitiveness, the need for — and importance of — standards also increases.
IPC's PDX standards and RosettaNet's PIPs offer support for supply chain communication. These standards can help manufacturers shorten the time and cost required to establish new partnerships.
Barbara Goldstein, strategic advisor to the director of the Electronics and Electrical Engineering Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), may be contacted at barbara.goldstein@nist.gov. Richard Kubin, vice president, product lifecycle management, E2open, may be contacted at rkubin@e2open.com.