The next installment of our Application Overview series is Component Engineering (CE) within Aras Innovator. CE ensures users have full management and tracking of Manufacturer Parts, including the ease of selection and swapping of components.
CE within Aras Innovator simplifies electronic component selection by allowing Engineers and Procurement Specialists instant access to current technical data statuses on hundreds of millions of parts. This includes components down to the board-level from leading manufacturers around the world.
Using IHS marketplace, CE allows the responsible engineer/specialist to ensure purchased components meet specifications, identify comparable alternate parts, and ensure obsoleted parts are replaced in timely manner without disruption. All specifications from the millions of parts indexed by IHS can be easily accessed within Innovator and even point users to in depth specifications with any of the Manufacturer Parts websites. Please also note that in order to use CE an extra feature license is required!
Overview:
Within Aras Innovator, IHS can easily be accessed by going to the TOC > Sourcing > Cloud Manufacturer Parts. Here we will see the following:
This allows us to search any parts that are contained within the IHS database either through the use of filters to narrow results or by part number/keywords.
Run a search with Optoelectronics - other optoelectronics and rohm compliant - yes then run a search. Here we can compare part variants (by selecting the 
) and even add parts to your Aras Innovator instance:
Close the compare dialog and double click any of the parts in the search list. This will open up the Aras Innovator Part Form and will show an Add button. After selecting add part Aras Innovator will open the part and add it to your database.
Now lets go back to the TOC > Sourcing > Manufacturer Parts and search for MCL-N6WT-B-NW-P (this part is an example from Aras Innovator 12 SP11 Demo Environment). Open this part, we can see a property on the form for data sheets. Clicking the link brings us directly to the sheet for viewing purposes:
Installation:
In order to setup Component Engineering for your Aras Innovator instance you will need to activate the feature license, in order to do this log into your Aras Innovator instance and click the User Menu icon. Then within the dropdown select Activate Feature, a popup dialog will appear allowing you to input your license.
Next we will need to download the latest Aras Update release. Once that download has complete you, go ahead and open the application, you will see a list of applications we can download and install. For this blog I am going to download CE 12R3, the latest release of Component Engineering. Once the package is downloaded locally hit install and you’ll be prompted for some information on your Instance.
After filling in the correct information, press install and within a few minutes you should receive a successful result message. You can then log into your instance of Aras Innovator and utilize the new functionality. In order to verify the application is installed all you need to do is open up the TOC and there should be a new section called Sourcing which will contain the Manufacturer Part ItemType. Should look like this:
Conclusion:
Thanks for following along in the latest installment of our Application Overview blog series. Comment below if your organization finds this content useful and stay tuned to learn more about the rest of our Application lineup!