
Many years ago, in my school English lessons, I was taught the difference between the words ‘affect’ and ‘effect’. Even to this day, though, I’ve never been quite sure of their proper usage, and often find myself being corrected on it. One thing I am certain of, though, is the powerful effect of ‘Date Effectivity’ in PLM 360, and how it can positively affect the product development process (or should that be ‘affect’ and ‘effect’?).
Date Effectivity is a function which is applied to a Bill of Materials (BoM), and was introduced in the recent latest release of PLM 360. This capability allows a particular revision of a component part or subassembly to be assigned ‘effectivity’ dates which, essentially, define a period of time during which that item is valid within that BoM. When a BoM contains that item, it will show whatever revision of it is relevant at that point in time. You can choose to view such a BoM as it would appear at a given point in the past, present, or future. This capability allows improved and more flexible planning, for example for Manufacturing and Purchasing departments, and more accurate traceability of previous configurations of a BoM.
Further details of how this powerful new capability works is outlined in our PLM TV User Briefing video …
System Administrators can choose whether to enable this capability, and where, in the release cycle, it comes into play. Effectivity is configured in the Lifecycle Editor facility of the Setup menu. Within the editor, we can switch the ability to apply date effectivity on at any one or more of the release lifecycle stages. For example, if we want to enable it at the ‘Production’ stage, we right-click at that point to edit it …
![clip_image002[11] clip_image002[11]](https://underthehood-autodesk.typepad.com/.a/6a012877799c1c970c017eea31fd2b970d-pi)
… then simply click on the ‘Effectivity’ tick box, and select ‘Accept’ to enable it …

Once enabled, every time a user signs off the revisioning step of the Change Order workflow to move an item to ‘Production’ status, they will have the option to set a date effectivity.
So, if you’re managing Bills of Materials today in PLM 360, be sure to check out date effectivity, and see how it can really affect the effectiveness of your product development process (please correct me if the grammar in my last sentence is wrong!).
-- Gavin England
-- Photo: Dictionary.com