The enterprise friction point
Engineering Change Orders (ECOs) took an average of 16 days to propagate from SolidWorks/PTC Windchill PLM into the plant ERP and shop-floor work instructions. Clerical delays and manual BOM transcription errors caused production lines to assemble outdated part revisions, resulting in $480,000 in annual scrapped inventory and expensive field rework.
Transformation objectives
- Parse engineering revision packets, 2D drawing revisions, and change justification notes automatically.
- Reconcile CAD/PLM engineering BOMs (EBOM) with manufacturing BOMs (MBOM) and ERP item masters.
- Identify work-in-progress (WIP) and warehouse inventory affected by part obsolescence in real time.
- Accelerate ECO approval-to-floor-release turnaround from 16 days to under 24 hours.
Discovery & architectural audit
Process audit revealed that 80% of ECO cycle time was spent on manual cross-departmental coordination (materials, purchasing, quality, floor supervisors) checking whether existing parts should be scrapped, reworked, or used up before revision cut-in.
The Fortiv AI architecture
- 01
CAD/PLM Document Intelligence Ingest: Vision-language models parsing ECO redlines, drawing revision title blocks, and tolerance changes.
- 02
EBOM-to-MBOM Reconciliation Graph: Automated comparison engine highlighting added, deleted, and modified component line items across multi-level assemblies.
- 03
Inventory Scrap & Disposition Analyzer: Cross-references active ERP purchase orders, warehouse stock, and open shop-floor work orders to calculate exact financial cut-in impact.
- 04
Digital SOP Propagation Engine: Automatically updates line-side tablet work instructions and sends revised component pick-lists to WMS.
Verified audit outcomes
Post-deployment impact
- 16d → 24h
- Engineering Change Order lifecycle compressed by 94%
- $480,000 Saved
- In obsolete inventory scrap and post-assembly rework in year one
- 100% BOM Parity
- Between CAD design and ERP manufacturing bill of materials
- 0 Assembly Defects
- From outdated drawing revisions across 12 months
Architectural lessons learned
Highlighting exact visual drawing bounding-box differences alongside BOM table changes accelerates engineering sign-off by 4x.
Automated inventory disposition calculations give materials managers confidence to approve change orders on the same day.
Future scale roadmap
Expanding the system to perform automated supplier notification and revised drawing dispatch upon final ECO sign-off.
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