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ION Integration with SolidWorks: Managing Items and BOMs Nick Stoltzfus

Senior Consultant

Guide Technologies, LLC.

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Project Objectives

• Integrate Solidworks PDM Bills of Materials with XA EPDM using ION

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Project Objectives

• Solidworks becomes the system of record for Bills of Materials

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Project Objectives

• Minimize/Eliminate the need for manual data entry.

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Project Objectives

• Notify users in case of exceptions

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Challenges to Overcome • Replacing tribal knowledge of a data-entry person with an automated

system

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Challenges to Overcome • Transforming Solidworks XML format to XA System Link

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Challenges to Overcome • Data Integrity in Solidworks

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Infor ION

Business Vault Analytics | Reporting | Search | In-context BI

ERP WHM

Motion Cloud

IDM

Common experience

Common workspace

Common analytics

Common reporting

Common workflow

Common event management

Common localizations

Common mobility

Common packaged integration

Content Management

Infor ION Intuitive, browser-based interface used to easily model

and manage all Infor ION services. ION DESK

ION SERVICE Connecting Infor and non-Infor applications across multiple platforms.

Event Management, Workflow and Pulse engines.

ION WORKFLOW

Automated Task Routing and Approvals

Through Workflow

ION ACTIVITY DECK

View and Handle Tasks, Alerts, and

Notifications. View Workflow Status

Diagram and Follow Application Documents.

ION EVENT MANAGEMENT

Business Task Completion Monitoring and Proactive Alerting

of Exceptions.

ION CONNECT

Communication and Secure Sharing of Data Across On-Premise and

Cloud Applications.

ION PULSE

Distribution of Tasks, Alerts, and

Notifications. Enable Prioritization,

Escalations and Work Management.

ION Connectors

INFOR LEGACY Apps / 3

rd Party APPS or

MIDDLEWARE

BUSINESS

ADAPTERS

INFOR STANDARD

INFOR CLOUDSUITE

EAM XM

MOTION SYTELINE

DB CONNECTOR

FILE CONNECTOR

WEB SERVICES CONNECTOR

JMS (e.g. IBM, Tibco, Webmethods, etc.)

INFOR I/O Box CONNECTOR

MS CRM DYNAMICS

SALESFORCE.COM

SAP

EDI CONNECTOR

ORACLE EBS

ION Process

Translate into XML

Interpret from XML

BOD

Connection Point Solidworks

Connection Point XA

ION Connector

Solution

• Easy as 1, 2, 3... 4

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1. Get the XML File from Solidworks

2. Make sure all the items exist in XA

3. Transform the Solidworks XML to a BillOfMaterials BOD

4. Submit the BillOfMaterials BOD to XA

Step 1

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Step 1 • BOM maintenance is done in

Solidworks, prompting an XML document to be created in a shared folder.

• How does this happen???

• Don’t know. Don’t care.

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Step 1

• Create an ION file connectionpoint

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Step 1

• Specify the location on the network where ION can find the file

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Step 1

• Specify the folder location of where the file can be found and where it should be placed when it’s done being processed

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Step 1

• ION will poll that folder periodically and pick files that are there based on your specified naming pattern.

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Step 2

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Step 2

• Before we can create a bill of material, we need to make sure that all of the items in the BOM are in XA and eligible for a BOM

• How can we do that from ION?

• An ION Intermediate Database connection to the IBM i

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Step 2

• Create a connection point of type Database

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Step 2

• Define the connection point information

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IP Address or Host Name of

IBM i

Library list for stored procedure

call

Step 2

• Define the connection point information

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Call to IBM i Stored Procedure

Document to be received from database

connection

Document to be sent from database

connection

Step 2

• Stored procedure is simply an RPG program that takes the Solidworks XML as a parameter

d GTPUTITMS PR

d inXML like(XML_CLOB)

d GTPUTITMS PI

d inXML like(XML_CLOB)

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Step 2

• Use RPG tools to parse XML and determine the items involved.

XML-SAX %Handler(MyHandler: myCommArea )

%XML(wrkxml : 'doc=string');

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Step 2

• Clean up the data

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Step 2

• If the item doesn’t exist or is incomplete in XA, fill in the missing pieces with the System Link LPI

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• System Link LPI • Application program creates System-Link request

• LPI is called with the System-Link request as parameter • Size of request is limited to 64K characters

• System-Link server processes request and returns the System-Link

response to the LPI

• LPI sends the System-Link response back to the application program • Message is returned if an error condition is encountered

XML Request

XML Response

L

P

I

System-Link RPG

Program

Step 2

System-Link 29

LPI Parameter List (PSVPSR1R)

Parameter Description Usage Size Type

P#XREQ System-Link Request I 65,535 A Request from application program

P#XRSP System-Link Response O 65,535 A System-Link response

P#MRQR More query results O 8 A *YES if more records than returned

P#ERFD Internal errors O 8 A *YES if response contains error(s)

P#MSID External errors O 7 A PSX0122 - Error in processing (server not started) PSX0130 - Response too large

System-Link 30

Step 2

• After it’s done creating all the necessary items and everything it is ok to proceed, the Solidworks XML is passed back to the ION document flow.

• See the ION Technical Reference Guide to see examples of DB2/400 programs that receive, process, and return XML data.

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Step 3

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Step 3

• We need to transform the Solidworks XML to a BillOfMaterials BOD

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Step 3

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Step 3

• How do we that? • An ION XSLT Mapping.

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Step 3

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Start with a Solidworks XML,

“SWBom”

End up with a standard

BillOfMaterials BOD

Step 3

• Uses XSL to transform XML

• XSL stands for EXtensible Stylesheet Language, and is a style sheet language for XML documents.

• Standard language for transforming XML

• Different from conventional RPG programming but not terribly difficult to learn.

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Step 3

• The end product of the transformation is a nicely formed BillOfMaterials BOD

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Quick Recap

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Quick Recap

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Quick Recap

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Quick Recap

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Step 4

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Step 4

• We need to submit the bill of material to XA for processing

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Step 4

• Create a connection point to Infor XA

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Step 4

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Database driver is DB2/400

Host name of IBM i

AMELIB and AMFLIB

Step 4

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• Add the BillOfMaterials BOD as a document that can be processed by the connection point.

• Check boxes designate the types of BODs that the XA can process.

• XA will receive a Process BOD

Step 4

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• BOD is handed off to XA Inbox for processing

Inbound transactions from ION

DESTINATIONS

Solidworks

XA ENVIRONMENT

Bill of Material Business Object

transformed request

response System-Link

DESTINATION TRANSFORMATIONS

XA_Process BillOfMaterials

ION

BO

D

request (Bill of Material BOD)

response (BOD)

Inbound transactions from ION

What setup must be done in XA ?

Activate the relevant ‘*inbound’ transformation.

Request Flow: Inbound - ION

IN

SLS

SLC

SLA

Create Business

Objects

System-Link Adapter polls the Inbox to fetch XML messages inbound into

XA

Step 4 Bill of Material is created/updated in XA

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Infor ION Intuitive, browser-based interface used to easily model

and manage all Infor ION services. ION DESK

ION SERVICE Connecting Infor and non-Infor applications across multiple platforms. Even

Management, Workflow and Pulse engines.

ION WORKFLOW

Automated Task Routing and Approvals

Through Workflow

ION ACTIVITY DECK

View and Handle Tasks, Alerts, and

Notifications. View Workflow Status

Diagram and Follow Application Documents.

ION EVENT MANAGEMENT

Business Task Completion Monitoring and Proactive Alerting

of Exceptions.

ION CONNECT

Communication and Secure Sharing of Data Across On-Premise and

Cloud Applications.

ION PULSE

Distribution of Tasks, Alerts, and

Notifications. Enable Prioritization,

Escalations and Work Management.

Event Management Overview

• Event Management offers functionality to monitor business events based on pre-defined business rules and alert users when exceptions occur.

• You can monitor these business event types: • Individual instances of documents

• For example, a new sales order in the form of a Sync.SalesOrder document

• Combinations of multiple events • For example, a sales order and its related shipment

• Non-occurrence of events • For example, an invoice has never been sent

• Applications that are enabled to work with ION Connect can use the Event Management functionality without any changes in the application.

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Setting up Event in ION

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Create Monitor: Add Document

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Create Monitor: Add Attributes

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Create Monitor: Condition Builder

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Create Monitor: Rules

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Create Monitor: Alert Settings

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Create Monitor: Distribution

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ION Event Architecture

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Desk

Monitors (Business Rules)

Administrator

Connect

Event Management

Pulse

Activity Deck Business

Application

Ming.le Foundation (Workspace)

Business User

Sync Business Object Document

Lessons Learned

• A significant amount of time is required to ensure data is prepared to go from Solidworks to XA

• Once it’s in a standard BOD form the data flows very well

• Stored procedure calls from ION to the IBM i provide significant flexibility

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Questions