Collaboration With Suppliers/Vendors in Teamcenter
This blog is created as a response and solution to the above PLM challenge, This is a part of our weekly Wiser Wednesday Challenge on Linkedin – Aimed to add value to the PLM community.
Check out Quiz #10 on our LinkedIn page.
Collaboration With Suppliers/Vendors in Teamcenter
Solution Blog :
Teamcenter provides multiple ways to collaborate with Suppliers. The following are two main/most-used options through which an OEM can connect to its vendor using Teamcenter:
A. Teamcenter Supplier collaboration foundation
B. Teamcenter Partner Connect
Both these modules are based on the Teamcenter Vendor Management feature which helps the OEMs to manage data and various business processes associated with Suppliers/Vendors. This feature also supports managing the changes in vendor and parts information over time.
A. Teamcenter Supplier Collaboration Foundation
Supplier collaboration is a module/feature provided by Teamcenter to exchange data with multiple Vendors/Partners/Suppliers who don’t have the access to Teamcenter.
Supplier collaboration provides a separate client for the Supplier. The suppliers can log in to the SCF Client using the user-id and password provided in the invitation mail to access the data.
There are two major use cases which are supported by Supplier Collaboration:
Design Data Exchange
Bid Processing
In the Design Data Exchange use-case OEMs can share their designs for contract manufacturing with Suppliers and also can get their review inputs on the designs. OEMs create a new Design Data Exchange package and send the package to suppliers. An invitation email is sent to the suppliers to access the Design Data Exchange Event from the SCF client application.
In Bid processing, use-case OEMs can get bids from multiple suppliers for a work package. The work package is shared with the Suppliers using Supplier Collaboration. The supplier can log in to the SCF client review the work package and submit their bid amount.
If a supplier cannot access the URL the design/part data can also be shared using secured (password-protected) e-mails. An application named Briefcase browser can be used to exchange data using e-mails. This application can be used by suppliers to browse view/edit the design data (Attributes, BOM, CAD files etc.).
B. Teamcenter Partner Connect
Partner Connect is a module provided by Teamcenter for very close and tight collaboration between the company and its Vendors/Partners/Suppliers to exchange product data, manage changes, and track related documentation.
Unlike SCF, In Partner connect there is no separate client provided instead the Vendors/ Partners/Suppliers get a Teamcenter account and they can log in using AW URL and access the data.
The access to any data which is shared with Suppliers is controlled by using a partner contract (a separate object which is attached to every shared object). This contract has all the information and allows a company to set time-bound access (end date is present) to only specific data information in Teamcenter.
Following are the differences and a table which gives an idea of when we can use which module
Solution blog by Sagar Nagade.
