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How Product Information is Represented in Manufacturing Cloud
Design standalone and bundled products for your customers. Organize and classify products in sophisticated hierarchies to increase their discoverability. Define and assign attributes to your products, and sell those products to your customers. Drive personalized sales negotiations by curating rules to define the eligible and available products for each customer.
Required Editions
| Available in: Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions |
In this example, we show how a manufacturer, Grande Robotics, organizes their product information by using Product Catalog Management in Manufacturing Cloud.
Product Information
Define the products that you sell and the relationships between different products, products and their components, and products in a bundle.
| Requirement | Action | Example |
|---|---|---|
A manufacturer wants to model its stock-keeping units. A product has a commercial value and can be sold to a customer. |
Create products. | Grande Robotics, a factory automation manufacturer, creates a product record each for the Packaging Arm Robot Basic, Packaging Arm Robot High-Speed, and Packaging Arm Robot Ultra products that it sells. |
A manufacturer wants to model standalone products that don’t have an associated product hierarchy. A product record with the None product type represents a simple product. |
Create simple products. | Grande Robotics creates a simple product for Environmental Gas Sensor A1 that it sells as a standalone product. |
A manufacturer wants to model a group of products that are always sold together. A product record with the Bundle product type represents a bundled product. A bundled product has a root product. |
Create bundled products. Structure the bundle by adding product components or product component groups to it. | Grande Robotics sells an Order Picking System that consists of the Order Picking Arm Robot, Robot Battery Pack, and Conveyor Belt Basic products. It creates a bundled product called Order Picking System. It adds the Order Picking Arm Robot, Robot Battery Pack, and Conveyor Belt Basic products as child components in the bundle. |
A manufacturer wants to ensure that sales teams can’t configure products or add products to a bundle during a sale. A product record with the Configure During Sale as Not Allowed represents a static product. |
Create static products. | Grande Robotics defines the Environmental Gas Sensor A1 simple product as static because it doesn't want the sales team to configure the product during a sale. |
A manufacturer wants to ensure that sales teams can configure products or add products to a bundle during a sale. A product record with the Configure During Sale as Allowed represents a configurable product. |
Create configurable products. | Grande Robotics defines the Order Picking System bundled product as configurable. It wants to allow sales reps to add optional components such as spare belt covers to the bundle during a sale. |
A manufacturer wants to define the permissible quantities of products that are sold as a part of product bundles. Local cardinality is the default, minimum, and maximum quantity of an individual product in a product bundle. Group cardinality is the minimum and maximum quantity of the child components that can be added to a bundle. |
Define the cardinality of products in bundles. | Grande Robotics sets a minimum quantity for Environmental Gas Sensor A1 product that it sells as a part of its Gas Safety System bundle. |
A manufacturer procures components of a product from different tier-1 and tier-2 suppliers. It wants to track how it can use different components to make various products. |
Create product related materials. | Grande Robotics maps the Arm Base, Arm Rotor, and Arm End Effector product components to the Order Picking Arm Robot product. |
A manufacturer wants to model physical items of commercial value that are manufactured, delivered, sold to a customer, or installed as a part of another asset. An asset is an instance of a product. |
Create assets. | Grande Robotics sells a Packaging Arm Robot Ultra RM0612 asset to a partner. |
Product Attribute Information
Define the attributes, properties, and specifications of products. Classify attributes and assign them to similar products.
| Requirement | Action | Example |
|---|---|---|
A manufacturer wants to model the attributes, characteristics, or properties of products. An attribute definition represents an attribute that describes one or many products. Manufacturers can assign an attribute to a product. |
Create attribute definitions. | Grande Robotics creates these attribute definition records to define conveyor systems and order management arm robots that Grande Robotics sells.
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A manufacturer wants to organize attributes into logical groups. An attribute category represents a logical grouping of multiple attributes. Manufacturers can assign multiple attributes to a product classification by using attribute categories. |
Create attribute categories and assign attributes to attribute categories. | Grande Robotics creates an attribute category record to describe all its conveyor belt products called Conveyor Belt Category. It assigns these attributes in the attribute category.
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A manufacturer wants to list the possible values of an attribute. An attribute picklist represents a set of possible values for an attribute. An attribute picklist value represents a value for an attribute. You can associate an attribute picklist with an attribute definition. |
Create attribute picklists and add picklist values to them. | Grande Robotics creates these attribute picklist records.
Here are the attribute picklist values for the Industry attribute picklist.
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A manufacturer wants to quickly assign a set of attributes to similar products. A product classification is a template that holds a collection of attributes that describe products. Products that are based on a product classification inherit all the attributes of the product classification. A product classification attribute record represents an attribute that’s assigned to a product classification. |
Create product classifications and assign attributes to product classifications. Then, create products based on product classifications. | Grande Robotics creates a product classification for its conveyor belt products called “Conveyor Belts Classification”. It assigns all the attributes in the Conveyor Belt Category to the classification. Then, it assigns some other attributes individually.
Grande Robotics creates a product record for its new Sorting Conveyor Belt Ultra product. It creates the product record based on the Conveyor Belts Classification product classification. The Sorting Conveyor Belt Ultra product inherits these attributes.
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A manufacturer wants to specify the value of attributes in products. Sometimes, some attributes of a product are specific to that particular product. Or, when a product is sold as a part of a bundle, certain attributes of the product have default values. Manufactures can set the default value of an attribute for a product. A product attribute definition record represents the default value for an attribute of a product. |
Configure the inherited attributes of products and choose default values for attributes in their product attribute definitions. | The Sorting Conveyor Belt Ultra product sold by Grande Robotics is only meant for the Transportation and Logistics industry. To specify this restriction, Grande Robotics configures the Industry inherited attribute for the Sorting Conveyor Belt Ultra product. It sets the default value of the Industry attribute as Transportation and Logistics. |
A manufacturer wants to specify that an attribute impacts the price of a product. Pricing designers can differentiate prices of products by using price impacting attributes in attribute-based price adjustment schedules. |
Set inherited attributes in products or product classifications as price impacting. | Grande Robotics differentiates the prices all its products by industry. For instance, it sells the Environmental Gas Sensor A1 for US$ 300 to customers from the manufacturing industry and for $340 to customers in the energy industry. It sets the Industry attribute of the Environmental Gas Sensor A1 as price impacting. |
Product Catalog Information
Organize the products in your portfolio with catalogs and categories. Define a sophisticated product organization hierarchy.
| Requirement | Action | Example |
|---|---|---|
A manufacturer wants to model a collection of products that it sells. A catalog represents an assortment of similar products. |
Create catalogs. | Grande Robotics creates a catalog called Conveyor Systems for all the conveyor systems that it sells and a catalog called Order Management Arm Robots for all the order management arm robots that it sells. |
A manufacturer wants to organize products within a catalog into logical groups and subgroups. A catalog can have multiple categories. A category can have multiple subcategories. |
Create categories and subcategories in catalogs. | Grande Robotics creates these categories within the Order Management Arm Robot catalog.
Grande Robotics creates these subcategories within the Order Packaging Robots category.
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A manufacturer sells its products under different brand names to differentiate the products by product usage and market segment. |
Create business brands. | Grande Robotics sells its industrial safety products under its Westandrf Safety business brand. |
Product Sale
Determine how you sell products to customers and what products customers are eligible to buy.
| Requirement | Action | Example |
|---|---|---|
A manufacturer wants to define the method of selling products. Product selling models define whether products are sold one-time or as subscriptions. |
Create product selling models and assign product selling models to products. | The Packaging Arm Robot Basic product sold by Grande Robotics is sold one-time, not as a subscription. To specify this selling model, Grande Robotics creates a one-time product selling model and assigns the model to the Packaging Arm Robot Basic product. |
