MCO release fails because CAD data not updated in BOM, causing workflow rejection

PLM Windchill
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1

Our MCO release workflow is consistently failing at the final approval gate. The root cause is that when engineers update CAD models and create MCOs to release those changes, the BOM structure in Windchill isn’t reflecting the latest CAD revisions. The workflow has a validation step that checks BOM-CAD synchronization, and it’s rejecting releases because the BOM still references older CAD iterations.

Engineers are updating assemblies in Creo, checking them in, but when they add the CAD documents to the MCO, the BOM links aren’t automatically updating to point to the new revisions. This is stalling our entire change process - we have 15 MCOs currently stuck waiting for manual BOM corrections.

The MCO workflow automation is supposed to handle revision control automatically, but something in our configuration isn’t working. Has anyone encountered this BOM-CAD synchronization issue with MCO workflows?


MCO-2025-0847: Status=Approval Failed
Validation Error: BOM references CAD rev A.3, MCO contains A.5
Affected Part: P-10234 (Assembly)
2

We had exactly this problem in version 11.1. The issue is that the standard MCO workflow doesn’t wait for CAD-to-BOM propagation to complete. Engineers need better guidance on when to create MCOs after CAD updates. Consider adding a workspace validation step.

3

The Creo integration settings look correct - automatic BOM sync is enabled. But I’m wondering if the timing is the issue. Maybe the BOM update happens asynchronously after check-in, and engineers are creating MCOs too quickly before the sync completes?

4

I’d also look at your MCO workflow definition. You might need a pre-processing step that explicitly updates BOM links before the validation gate runs. We added a custom robot that scans all CAD documents in the MCO, identifies their parent parts, and forces a BOM rebuild. That solved similar validation failures for us.