Product structures

Product Structures – A Key to Modularization

Product structures depict the components of a product in their hierarchical relationship to one another. This allows complex products with a large number of individual components to be structured and displayed in a clear and organized manner.

Especially for configurable products with high variance, a product structure is helpful in being able to contextually display the large number of individual position variants and to keep the product manageable from a development perspective.

The product structure thus forms the modular building block for your product, from which rule-based variants can be derived.

By using product structures in the PLM system, you gain:

• A functional breakdown of your product
• High clarity in collaborative development projects
• Fast and targeted navigation through product data
• Structuring of variable components into configurable product modules
• High and fast reusability of assemblies and components through functional allocation

Product structures – Efficiency-Driver and Quality Assurance for configurable products

Fixed bills of materials for product variants are only manageable in a very limited variant space and pose significant risks for change control.

Even in non-configurable products, a lack of structure leads to high manual effort in searching for components and often results in performance losses in the PLM system for extensive bills of materials.

A challenge for the successful use of product structures is distinguishing between the levels of available materials with a specific part number and the structuring of the product into modules. This differentiation must also be designed for the interaction between PDM and ERP.