Part Manufacturers

In ITrack Enterprise, on the Part management screen, there are several manufacturers and models. This document aims to explain the difference between these fields and what ways they are used.

Assembly Manufacturer/Model:

These fields are designed to track the manufacturer/model of the assembly this part comes off of. The intention with this feature is to allow the user to track the main 'application' of an item. In the case of a component part, this would be the manufacturer/model of the assembly it applies to, but for items who are already assemblies, this contains the manufacturer/model of the part itself.

For an example, let's say you have the following two items: 1. a Crankshaft that came out of a CAT 1140 engine. The crankshaft part type (3030) has a type set id of 3000 (engines), which means the assembly model list contains engine models. Therefore, this item would have an assembly manufacturer/model of CAT/1140. 2. An actual CAT 1140 used engine. Since engines (3000) have a matching type set id to their part type #, both of their model lists are the same. This item would have an assembly manufacturer/model of CAT/1140 as well.

Uses of Assembly Models

This data is used in the main manufacturer/model search on the part search screen. This is due to the fact that a user is often searching by an item's application.

Manufacturer/Model:

These items are designed to track the actual manufacturer/model of an item, when that is known. This represents the company who actually produced the item and what they call it. Obviously, for many component parts, this is not something that a company may know or care to track. For this reason, these fields are optional.

So, using the same two previous parts, we might fill out the following information in manufacturer/model: 1. We don't know who made the crankshaft or what they refer to it as, we only track it by its application (see above). Therefore these fields get left blank. If this were a component with a common or industry-standard manufacturer/model identification, we'd put that here instead. 2. The engine's manufacturer/model are the same as the assembly, so we put CAT/1140 here as well.

Uses of Models

The manufacturer/model of an item identify what the item 'is', and therefore, it is used when considering if items are interchangeable. For example, if 2 items have the same part type/manufacturer/model, they are considered at least loosely interchangeable.

Also, the vendor catalog system drives its information off of the manufacturer/model of an item. There is a specific table that maps vendor #/part # combination (who you buy it from and what they call it) to manufacturer/model combinations. When this information is mapped correctly, it gives the system the ability to know the purchasing options for any particular manufacturer/model combination, even if the item isn't in inventory. This is especially valuable when ordering non-stocked parts on a PO.