Bulk-load a WBS from Excel

Authoring a Work Breakdown Structure one node at a time in Active Workspace (Timeline → Quick Add Plan) works for small structures, but for anything resembling a real program WBS — a few hundred nodes is common — it's painfully slow. IPP&E supports a bulk Excel import instead: one spreadsheet row per WBS node, with hierarchy driven by an integer level column rather than row indentation or manual drag-and-drop.

This was reverse-engineered from real sample import files rather than from published Siemens documentation (which does not currently document this format), so treat the column names as the format actually in use rather than an official Siemens-published contract. Two slightly different column-header schemas were observed across sample files; the canonical schema below is the recommended one to standardize on.

Canonical column schema

One row per WBS node.

Column	Meaning
Tc_Level	Integer depth in the hierarchy. 0 = the root node. Every other row's level is relative to its parent, not absolute indentation.
Tc_ObjectType	Wbs0Root for the single root-level row. Wbs0Element for every other row.
Name	Display name of the WBS node.
WBS Number	Period-separated WBS numbering, e.g. 1.2.3.1. Must be unique across the whole import (see gotchas below).
Work Package	True/False. True marks a lowest-level, actionable element — this maps to the underlying property wbs0IsWorkElement.
Common WBS	True/False — whether this node is sourced from / tied to a Common WBS template.
Initial Span Time	Duration in hours. Observed convention in sample files: 480 hours is used for summary-level elements, 9600 hours for work packages — these aren't hard rules, just the values seen in practice, presumably placeholder/planning durations to be refined later.
WBS Number Required	True/False — whether a WBS Number is mandatory for this node (maps to wbs0IsWBSNumberRequired).

ID and Revision columns: leave both blank to have Teamcenter auto-assign on import. If you do populate a Revision value manually, note that the default revision naming convention is a bare hyphen -, not A or 1 — typing A or 1 into the Revision column fails Teamcenter's naming rule validation and the import errors out.

Legacy / alternate header names

Some sample files use the underlying Teamcenter property names directly as column headers instead of the friendlier display names above. These are synonyms for the same data, not additional columns:

Alternate header	Canonical equivalent
wbs0Number	WBS Number
wbs0IsWorkElement	Work Package
psi0WorkEffort	Initial Span Time
wbs0IsWBSNumberRequired	WBS Number Required

When building an import template, pick one schema and use it consistently — mixing the two across rows in the same file is a likely source of import errors, though this wasn't directly tested.

Optional: riding a schedule network alongside the WBS

At least one real sample file (WBS_Import_pursuit.xlsx) carried a parallel activity/predecessor list in trailing columns alongside the WBS rows — activity code (e.g. A01, A01a), predecessor WBS number, and activity name. This means the schedule network (activities and their dependencies) can be authored in the same spreadsheet as the WBS itself, rather than as a separate step, if your import tooling supports reading both column groups.

Why this matters

The manual AW authoring path (Timeline → Quick Add Plan, one node at a time) does not scale past small WBS structures. A single Excel import of this format has been used to load a WBS of roughly 400 nodes in one operation — versus what would be many, many individual manual creation steps through the AW UI. If your program's WBS is sourced from an external estimating tool, a MIL-STD-881F template, or a prior program's structure, exporting/transforming it into this Excel format and bulk-importing is the practical path, not manual re-entry.

See also: Bulk-import data-quality pitfalls and A&D pursuit-to-execution WBS template pattern.