San Ramon, CA – October 25, 2001 – As a result of partnering with its build-to-order, discrete manufacturing, and maintenance organization customers, Relevant Business Systems Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) users can now accurately define their company’s products, plus control and accurately report changes to all aspects of those products, including hardware, processes, and documents.

With Relevant Configuration Management, an assembly’s “As-Built” configuration is represented on-line by its components, as well as its required process and documentation, such as instruction sheets and the quality criteria and tests, needed to perform those processes. “As Planned to As-Built” reports reflect changes and deviations within the product. Users can drive product configurations via date-based and/or serial-based effectivities. In addition, as revision and change control is applied to engineering and manufacturing bills of material, it is likewise applied to the processes and supporting diagrams, process sheets, and other documents.

“We are very excited how Configuration Management and Document Control will help our contract and to-build manufacturing customers increase productivity, efficiency, and profitability,” emphasizes Patrick Garrehy, Relevant Business Systems' President and CEO. “Such an integrated business solution is crucial to the execution, accuracy, and reporting of all product definitions and product change activities.”

With Relevant, users can define, classify, and easily query multiple types of documents, including drawings, change orders, change notices, and change requests. Each document may have multiple revisions. Each revision letter is associated by effectivity type, either date or model/end-item serial number.

As needed, documents may be structured into a Bill of Documents to create master drawing lists of any other logical organization, with all structures being revision-controlled. Examples include change requests that belong to an engineering change notice, multiple drawings under a master drawing list, or multiple parts lists under a drawing.

Review and approval processes for engineering change requests and implementations of change orders may be planned and tracked by users in an activity queue. For easier data classification and querying, changes can be classified by type and priority. Also, the user can change the configuration of part/bills of material for manufacturing and engineering, routing and operation and documents. A complete history of past revisions and their associated effectivity, as well as pending engineering changes, may be reviewed in real time. Configuration-sensitive documents may be controlled through security levels and check in/check out control.

Available now, configuration management and product data control capabilities integrate with the Relevant manufacturing, shop floor, purchasing, and quality modules.