Authoring manufacturing process plans > Creating in-process assemblies

About in-process assemblies

Manufacturing Process Planner allows you to create or update an in-process assembly (IPA) structure based on consumed items in a Bill of Process (BOP).

An IPA is an aggregation of assigned parts incoming into different stations. When you generate an IPA on a specific station, you can see all the assembled parts up to and including that station. Teamcenter has two methods of IPA creation:

Dynamic in-process assembly (DIPA) Teamcenter creates a flat list of all parts in incoming stations, stored in the process structure with a Dynamic Workpiece occurrence type and with each station's parts generated as an end item .

When you create a DIPA, it is not persistent (never out of date), and the process is much faster than legacy IPA creation. DIPA supports scope flows (links from a selected line in a BOP), can be used in isolated studies as long as it is created under the station level, and is automatically created when a structure is loaded to Process Simulate or Teamcenter lifecycle visualization.

Legacy in-process assembly (IPA) When you set assembly tree creation options, Teamcenter generates a nested tree structure representing the IPA by traversing the process structure, collecting IPAs from previous process elements, and adding the selected line’s consumed objects. The IPA is stored as an occurrence group and is displayed in a separate tab beside the base view of the root product.

The system displays as many tabs as there are in-process assemblies for the different configurations. The IPA also appears as a line in the process structure in which you create it. By default, an IPA has an MEWorkpiece occurrence type. Your administrator can change this in the MERelationTypeAssemblyTree preference. Each IPA appears directly under the process element into which its corresponding process element flows if this process element type is selected in the Selected Process Types list in the Generate Assembly Tree Options dialog box. Otherwise, the IPA appears under the next process element flow that is selected in the Selected Process Types list. For example, if the process flow is from Station 2 to Station 3, the IPA for Station 2 is placed under the Station 3 process using an MEWorkpiece occurrence type. If a process structure consumes parts from multiple product structures, you can choose the product structure for which the assembly tree is created. If the Show unconfigured Assigned Occurrences button is turned off, only assigned IPAs from product structures that are configured for this process are displayed. Tip Right-click the IPA in the process structure and choose Find in base view to find the object in the assembly tree.

The in-process assembly transforms sequence length to tree depth. This is useful to model fishbone-structured assembly lines, for example, where a main line consumes the outcome of a subline. This outcome of a subline can be obtained by creating the in-process assembly tree on the subline. The resulting occurrence group can subsequently be consumed into the main line. You can visualize the IPA in the Graphics view. Visualizing the IPA can cause the part to appear multiple times in the viewer. To prevent you from having to select and blank each individual instance, you can set the following preferences:

TCVIS_Check_For_Duplica

TCVIS_Keep_Duplica_Map

TCVIS_Show_Consumed_Part_Only

If you have a process with a generated IPA structure with the Show Unconfigured Assigned Occurrences button turned on, and you unload the product and turn off the Show Unconfigured Assigned Occurrences button, some of the IPA levels are not displayed. To avoid this, when turning the Show Unconfigured Assigned Occurrences button on and off, do not unload the product structure.