PDXpert PLM Software
On-line Help Guide

This help topic describes the current PDXpert PLM release. Earlier releases may be different. To view your release's version of this topic, open PDXpert and press the F1 key or select the Help menu.

Item lifecycle phases

Collection Explorer ◢ General group ◢ Item Lifecycle Phases collection

Purpose §

Classifies item lifecycle phases, which distinguishes the lifecycle phases — that is, the design maturity — of documents, internally developed parts, and partner parts.

Where used §

Documents, parts

Data fields §

Name §
This is the complete name for the lifecycle phase.
Display name §
The abbreviation is used where the full lifecycle Name may be too long. These include the Item Explorer's search results Release column and on an item's References lists.
Description §
This gives the lifecycle phase and its function.
Relative maturity §
The lifecycle phase specifies a numeric maturity of items, compared to other items' lifecycle phases. PDXpert uses a zero value as unlimited production. Negative values are pre-production, and positive values are post-production.
PDXpert uses relative maturity to select the initial revision sequence or subsequent revision sequence to a part or document. See help topics Items: Common elements and Document and part iterations.
Active: users can select
Default member of collection
Permanent member of collection §
See the Managing collections: Common attributes help topic.

Setup §

The number of lifecycle phases is primarily determined by your business rules for constraining an item when its technical content is not ready for Production (relative maturity 0).

Some people distinguish document lifecycle phases from part phases. For instance, a document may have Preliminary (design, review, validate) and Production status. A part may go through a more detailed cycle of Preliminary (internal review, vendor quote, customer discussion), Prototype (design validation), Field test (production validation / customer acceptance) and Production (unconstrained).

There's rarely a need for lifecycles after Production. This is because the technical content normally doesn't change in post-production, just its usage or availability. A Design End of Life (with relative maturity of 0) signals the part should not be used in new designs but lets it remain on existing production BOMs. If the item is not serviceable for any use, then remove it from any BOM, Sources or References list and cancel its released iteration.

By convention, parts produced by partner organizations and adopted without change by the home organization are maintained at Production only. Since your organization has no direct control over their technical content, the parts are simply qualified and Released, or disqualified and Canceled, for production use.

As is often the case, defining fewer members makes the collection easier to understand and manage.

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