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Introduction#

In Critical Manufacturing MES, Durables are reusable physical tools or assets that work together with a Resource to produce specific Products. Typical examples include fixtures, jigs, molds, stencils, and reticles. Unlike consumable materials, Durables are reused across many operations, but they still require tracking, validation, and maintenance.

Example showing reticles used as reusable durables in an exposure process.

Example showing additional durable tooling used during exposure processing.

Why Durables Matter#

Use Durables to support the following manufacturing needs:

  • Match the correct tooling to each Product and Step.
  • Support operations that require more than one Durable at the same time.
  • Share a durable pool across multiple Resources.
  • Constrain scheduling when Durables are scarce.
  • Validate setup before production starts.
  • Plan maintenance for each Durable.
Benefit Impact
Product-specific tooling tracking Ensures the correct setup for each Product.
Shared durable pools Improves the utilization of scarce tooling assets.
Scheduling integration Prevents conflicts between Resources and Durables.
Setup validation Reduces defects caused by incorrect tooling.
Track-in traceability Confirms that the scheduled Durables are the Durables that the Resource uses.
Maintenance planning Helps reduce unplanned downtime.

Table 1: Durables Benefits

Warning

Enable durable scheduling only when Durables are a real bottleneck, because durable scheduling can affect scheduling performance.

Security Features#

The permissions used to manage Durables are available under Administration > Security > Feature.

Screenshot showing the durables-related permissions in the security configuration.

Tutorial Assets#

Use the Master Data file to create the example model used in this tutorial.

Continue to Configuration to build the durable-specific model used in this tutorial. After you complete that setup, go to Scenarios to run the three execution scenarios.