Building the right spare, on the right revision
Thursday afternoon, an urgent order reaches the plant: four drive shafts for a customer whose line has stopped. The planner moves the job ahead of a series order, material is prepared and machining starts the next morning. Two days later, quality notices that the parts were built to revision B. Engineering released revision C three months ago, and that is the version the customer’s machine needs.
The parts are scrapped, the job is repeated and the series order is delayed again. The plant has paid twice for the same spare part.
Every spare part is a small production order
For a Manufacturing Director, spare parts orders are a constant source of disruption. They arrive in small quantities, often urgently, and they compete with series production for the same machines, materials and people. A wrong order is not only a commercial problem. It is lost capacity, wasted material and a less stable production plan.
Where wrong spare parts orders come from
Most wrong orders are created long before they reach the shop floor. They usually come from the same few places:
- A catalogue that still offers superseded parts, because it works on a copy of engineering data that is updated later.
- Part numbers typed again by hand when an email or a portal order is entered into the ERP.
- Descriptions instead of references, which someone has to interpret and check with engineering.
Each of these steps adds time, and each one is a chance to build the wrong revision. We looked at the wider cost of this disconnection in The hidden cost of disconnected Windchill PLM and ERP systems.
See the difference in practice: follow the same spare part order with and without ISFsoft Spare Portal.
Simulation · Spare part order
Follow one spare part order to the plant
Four drive shafts, ordered urgently for a stopped machine. Switch between the two scenarios to compare the journey.
Result of this order
Illustrative example based on common situations in manufacturing companies.
Four changes when spare parts orders come from ISFsoft Spare Portal
ISFsoft Spare Portal is synchronized directly with Windchill, so every order starts from the same product data the plant uses. For production, this creates four changes.
1. The same data as production
Spare parts orders are based on the same product structure and revisions released by engineering. What the plant builds for the aftermarket is consistent with what it builds for new machines.
2. No more producing obsolete parts
When a component is superseded, the portal stops offering the old version immediately. The plant avoids the wasted material, rework and scrap caused by orders for outdated references.
3. Orders that arrive ready to plan
Through ISFsoft Connect, orders flow automatically into the ERP with the correct part numbers and quantities. Production planning receives clean demand instead of manual requests that need to be checked and corrected.
4. Fewer urgent interruptions
Wrong orders are the main cause of emergency rework. When customers order the right part the first time, spare parts can be scheduled alongside series production rather than interrupting it.
What the plant gains
- A more stable production plan, with fewer last-minute changes.
- Less scrap and rework caused by outdated references.
- An aftermarket served efficiently, without sacrificing the performance of core operations.
The same precision that engineering puts into each released change now reaches every spare part the plant builds. If you want to see how this works from engineering’s side, read Engineer once, serve everywhere.
Every spare part is a small production order, and it deserves the same precision as the rest.
Want to see how ISFsoft Spare Portal would send cleaner orders to your plant? Get in touch with us and we will show you how it works with a real product structure.
Windchill spare parts catalogue without the double work
On Monday morning, an engineering change is released in Windchill. A bearing housing used across a whole machine family moves to a new revision. Within days, production is building with the new version. In the spare parts catalogue, nothing has changed yet. Someone still needs to export the new BOM, update the exploded view and check that the old reference is marked as replaced.
Until that happens, customers can keep ordering a part that engineering has already replaced. And the person who has to sort it out is, very often, someone from engineering.
The second catalogue nobody planned to maintain
In many manufacturing companies, the spare parts catalogue grew outside the PLM. It started as a spreadsheet exported from Windchill, a set of PDF drawings, or an illustrated catalogue created by the technical documentation team or an external provider. Over time, it became a second version of the product, with its own part lists, its own images and its own update cycle.
Windchill is where engineering creates and approves product data. But every change made there now has to be repeated somewhere else, by hand, often by people who were not part of the original decision. Engineering ends up responsible for data it no longer controls.
What a separate catalogue costs engineering
- Duplicate work on every change. Each ECN creates a second task: export, redraw, check and publish again.
- Two sources that drift apart. Small differences pile up until nobody is sure which version is right.
- Questions that come back to the team. When the catalogue can’t be trusted, after-sales asks engineering to confirm which part fits which machine.
- Engineering work that stays inside the factory. Clean BOMs and accurate 3D models are built for production and rarely reach customers or technicians.
How much time does that add up to in your company? Use this quick calculator to estimate it.
Calculator · 30 seconds
How much time does your second catalogue take?
Estimate the hours your team spends repeating engineering changes in a separate spare parts catalogue.
Time spent on the second catalogue
360hours a year
With ISFsoft Spare Portal, the catalogue is updated automatically when a change is released in Windchill. That time goes back into engineering.
Get in touch with usEstimate based on your inputs, using 1,700 working hours per person and year. Your data is not stored or sent anywhere.
Four changes when the spare parts catalogue comes from Windchill
ISFsoft Spare Portal is synchronized directly with Windchill. Instead of maintaining a copy, it publishes the product structures, 3D models and documentation that already exist there. For the engineering team, this creates four changes.
1. No duplicate catalogue to maintain
There is no second database to update. The portal shows what Windchill contains, so the two can’t drift apart. The time that used to go into exporting lists and redrawing exploded views goes back into engineering work.
2. Changes made once, applied everywhere
When an ECN is released, the portal reflects the new revision and the supersession automatically. Engineering’s decisions reach customers and service technicians without extra steps, emails or follow-up tasks.
3. Fewer questions reaching the engineering team
Customers and service staff can identify parts on their own, through the BOM, the serial number or the interactive 3D view. Fewer requests reach engineering, and the ones that do are the ones that really need an engineer. We looked at this problem in more depth in The invisible bottleneck in Windchill environments.
4. Engineering work that creates more value
The effort invested in clean BOMs and accurate 3D models now serves sales, service and customers too. Engineering becomes a visible contributor to after-sales revenue and customer satisfaction, not only to production.
Is your team maintaining a second catalogue?
A few signs that product data is being kept in two places:
- Someone exports BOMs to spreadsheets so that after-sales can work with them.
- Exploded views are recreated in a separate tool, or by an external provider.
- The spare parts catalogue is updated in batches, not when changes are released.
- Service teams regularly ask engineering which revision is the current one.
If two or more of these sound familiar, the catalogue has become a parallel system, and it will keep taking engineering time.
One source, from design to the field
A spare parts portal linked to Windchill extends the digital thread beyond the factory. Product data is created and approved in one place, and everyone who needs it, from the plant to the customer’s technician, works with the same version. If you want to see how this approach compares with portals built on ERP data, read Where should your spare parts portal get its truth?
The best engineering data is the data that reaches everyone who needs it.
Want to see how ISFsoft Spare Portal publishes your Windchill data? Get in touch with us and we will show you how it works with a real product structure.