Teamcenter Easy Plan

Easy Plan provides a state-of-the-art solution to author manufacturing work instructions based on the process plan and the manufacturing BOM. It provides an easy-to-use environment to author text instructions with visual aids that are delivered seamlessly to the shop floor for operators to execute the work.

• Enable intuitive user experience and ease of use for process planning
• Standardize and re-use best practices
• Develop process plans that reflect plant level production scenarios
• Leverage strong configuration and change management for manufacturing data
• Optimize cycle times and production rates
• Provide clear and up-to-date operator instructions

Easy Plan will help you shift your manufacturing planning activities earlier in the product lifecycle, and enable collaboration between manufacturing and design teams, providing early visibility to potential issues. Easy Plan, built on the Teamcenter PLM backbone, supports a digital thread for controlled and consistent data flow between manufacturing execution systems, and design and manufacturing engineering.

• Author, analyze and manage manufacturing plans more efficiently
• Communicate plans throughout your organization and extended enterprise more effectively.
• Immediately access optimization and validation tools directly from your process plans.

The best practice is to assign the engineering assembly as part of the background parts, this reduces the need to update when parts are changed – they get picked up immediately.

Easy Plan uses the Active Workspace client. It provides the same user experience and looks and feel. It is part of the Active Workspace installation, and it is aligned with the Active Workspace release cadence.

Easy Plan is part of the Active Workspace kit (starting AW 5.1) and can be installed through TEM or Deployment Center.

As far as compatibility is concerned, it follows the same compatibility matrix as Active Workspace.

An application is available in Active Workspace for performing CAD-BOM Alignment. Easy Plan for MBOM Management supports creating MBOM using the EBOM which is aligned using the new CBA. We provide a utility to help transition from Design EBOM to the new CBA.

Key benefits:

• Aligned with the product strategy of MFE and LCS
• Improved usability and performance resulting in productivity gains
• Rich future roadmap
• Zero deployments for a client

Yes, until the customer is ready to completely move to Easy Plan, as an intermediate step, our customer can use both clients in parallel. The customer can use MBOM Management in Easy Plan and Process Planner in MPP (RAC) or vice versa, do MBOM Management in MBM (RAC) and Process Planning in Easy Plan as the data model is the same.

We have worked hard to close the gap between the two clients, ensuring Teamcenter Easy Plan is the more mature offering. In fact, there are some features in Easy Plan that are not available in MPP. We encourage our MPP customers to move over to Easy Plan but will continue to support those that are still on MPP. We also encourage selling Teamcenter Easy Plan to all new prospects.

Users will access Deployment Center and will be prompted on the installation to choose one or more of the following options:

• BTO\BTS\CTO (Build to order \ Build to stock \ Configure to order) – these are recommended for planning for mass production, with high volumes and high variability, where the planning is most impacted from the plant layout and there is a need to do line balancing in order to remove bottlenecks in the assembly line (for that reason the planning is based on the plant BOP data model). Typical industries for this solution are Automotive, Automotive Suppliers, and White goods.
• ETO (Engineer to order) – recommended for the planning products that have low volumes and low variability, that have typically longer cycle times, and the planning is most impacted by the product structure. The planning in this solution is based on classic BOP. Typical industries for this solution are A&D and Shipbuilding.
• Component Manufacturing – pre-configurations of workflows and preferences designed for smaller products (components) with high variability. Provides consumables to the classification library to help track this in downstream systems (ERP).

For some industries, all solutions could potentially fit, and the decision is based on the Customer’s business process. A customer can also have both solutions in the environment, and use different solutions for different products if needed. Also, preferences can be used to customize the user experience and show tasks to users based on their manufacturing process needs.

Yes. Easy Plan supports multiple industry manufacturing processes and use cases.

There are no plans to sunset MPP, however, we are heavily investing in Teamcenter Easy Plan. Going forward, new solution capabilities will only be available through Easy Plan.

Teamcenter Manufacturing is an umbrella term for Teamcenter Manufacturing Process Planning (MPP) and Teamcenter Easy Plan. MPP is a rich client solution that has been around for a long time, and we have many customers using it today. Consider it the “Swiss Army Knife” of assembly planning with many capabilities in 1 client. The strategic future direction of Teamcenter Manufacturing – is Teamcenter Easy Plan. Easy Plan is a role and task-based, web solution that addresses industry-specific scenarios.

New product enhancements will be delivered on Teamcenter Easy Plan only. We are targeting a gradual replacement of MPP (RAC) functionality with Easy Plan. In the meantime, we will continue to support our MPP customers.

This is not currently on the roadmap; we will keep this in mind for future capability.

EBOM is not mandatory, check the preference EP_WorkPackageContentType

Background parts are added explicitly, it’s not calculated based on what has already been assigned. The plan is also to support Dynamic In-Process Assembly (DIPA) in the future.

Yes, Teamcenter Manufacturing solutions can integrate with AR technology solutions like TeamViewer, and other vendors that are being evaluated as well. AR provides capabilities based on the data authored in Easy Plan.

This is currently planned for a future release.

Yes, we can configure Plant BOP and Classic BOP in EP. Product BOP is on the roadmap.

Easy Plan for MBOM Management and Electronic Work Instructions (EWI) using Active Workspace Visualization. Easy Plan configured for BTO & ETO are using PLMVisWeb with microservice technology. This microservice technology is the go-forward strategy of the company, and in the future, the graphics engine will be replaced by NX. To capture 3D Product Views, Teamcenter Vis can be invoked from Easy Plan.

In MBOM alignment task, the search is based on the AW search in structure (using SOLR indexing for indexed structures). In the planning tasks, search is based on the structure search mechanism only.

Support for composites is on the long-term roadmap.

Easy Plan can support both. Check the preference EP_WorkPackageContentType to define the use of Product BOP, Plant BOP, or Classic BOP for Easy Plan.

IDIC is still used for assignments and assignment indications. In general, for existing capabilities, Easy Plan uses the same data model as MPP to allow an easy transition to the new application.

Yes. Easy Plan shows different assignment indicators to indicate assigned/over-assigned/missing parts. Compare is dynamic and reflects the current status without any user action. Compare criteria are configurable by the administrator.

This is the same as in Active Workspace. Customers can customize the menus and commands, add custom commands and views, etc

Weld points and Manufacturing features are in our long-term roadmap, there is no specific target version for that.

Easy Plan and Active workspace both support Product Configurator in Teamcenter, which is the recommended model for variants.