Pins are used to carry out quick assessments of material or process changes within the supply chain. It allows you to assess, in a very simplified manner the cost, compliance and sustainability impacts of any potential changes in materials.

Before staring this tutorial, a supply chain model must be setup.

Please follow the tutorials below to setup your model:

Following the setup of the supply chain model, the aim is to replace the 'Polyethylene Low Density Granulates' used in the Ball Pen Cap component, with a 'Polypropylene Granulate', using a Pin.

Open the Ball Pen Product Model, to do this, type the name of the Product Model into the search bar at the top of the page, then select the product from the list.

Note: The Ball Pen Product Model may also be shown at the bottom of the Makersite Dashboard, under 'Favorite products', this is where commonly used items are saved for quick access.

After opening the Ball Pen model, in the Product Group menu on the right of the screen, select 'View Product Model' located under 'Tools & Suggestions'.

It should then look like the screenshot below, showing the model's Sankey diagram.

The Sankey diagram may not show exactly as below, to make the diagram clearer you can use your mouse scroll wheel or touchpad to zoom in and out. The colored bars are also moveable, simply click on a bar and drag it to the desired location on the screen, if some of the bars have long names spacing them further apart can be helpful.

Note: Please be aware there might be some slight differences in your model compared to the screenshot above due to work from other tutorials etc.

Now find the 'Cap' component in the Sankey diagram and then trace back to the left and find the 'Polyethylene Low Density Granulate' Product Group.

There may be two Product Groups with 'Polyethylene Low Density Granulate', we will use the one with the largest bar.

You may need to adjust the layout of the Sankey bars, as some of the names may overlap which makes the diagram difficult to read.

To adjust the position of any of the bars, just click and drag the bar to a new position on the screen.

Product Groups are Green bars

Processes are Yellow bars

Red bars signify there has been an alternative applied

Note: If you are having trouble finding the Product Group, you can use your browsers Search/Find function, just press 'Ctrl+F' on your keyboard, alternatively open your browsers menu and select 'Find' from the list.

Once you have clicked on the bar, the material Product Group will be shown in the menu on the right.

The next step is to select 'Add supply chain pin' in the menu.

This will open a pop-up window, where you can then search for the alternative material by typing the name of the material into the search bar at the top, labelled 'Start typing to search for pinsets'.

Type 'Polypropylene Granulate' into the search.

Note: There is a filter drop down menu to the right of the search bar where you can refine the search results to specific categories e.g. 'Production processes' or 'Suppliers/Sites', for this example it can be left as 'All'.

After selecting the alternative material from the search results, a new pop-up window will appear showing the selection. Check that this is correct, and then click on the 'Apply selected pins' button in the bottom right corner.

The 'Performance Analytics' bar will now open to the right of the page.

Note: As we are in the Product Model, no change in performance is shown.

The location of the pin is marked on the Sankey diagram with a small red pin icon next to the corresponding bar.

Once the pin is set, we can now review the change by switching to the 'Climate Change - Total' app.

This is done by clicking on the app drop-down menu, where it says 'Product Model' at the top left of the page, from the menu select the 'Environment' heading, and then the 'Climate Change - Total' icon from the grid.

You can now switch between the different apps in Makersite to view how the alternative material choice has impacted the products cost, compliance and sustainability.

To save the alternative for further use, click on the 'Save' button in the toolbar above the Sankey diagram, this will open a pop-up window, you will then be asked to name and describe the alternative before saving.

For a more in-depth comparison a Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) can be conducted to compare both options. For more information on how to carry out a MCDA, please see the How To section on the Makersite FAQ pages.