Let’s talk about the importance of managing BOMs, but first of all what is a bill of materials?

The Bill of Materials, or “BOM”, is a structured list of information that describes how a product is defined or how it is to be made; it is usually displayed in a hierarchical format with the highest level showing the finished product and the lowest level that shows the individual components and materials.

The BOM is the most critical deliverable in product development and the backbone of the product definition. Yet, many companies use inadequate tools to define and manage it.

The Engineering Bill of Materials, (also known as EBOM), answers the question “What does each part of the product do?” and it defines all the information about the components of a given product, not only those represented by a CAD model. All the documentation for the certification of the product itself is attached to the EBOM.

In addition, the Manufacturing Bill of Materials (MBOM), determines the question “How can I make the product?”. This type of information does not modify the engineering bill as it is specifically related to the make-or-buy strategy and to the production plant. From this it follows the need to have diversified bills but always connected to each other therefore, you can maintain the traceability of information. Through this, each department can organize the information of its own responsibility, eliminating the risk of contamination of data pertaining to others.

According to production, the necessary lists are:

  • Bill of Components (MBOM) (Make or Buy, Phantom codes, Production Kit)
  • Bill of Processes (BOP) (work cycles, cycle times)
  • Bill of Resources (BOR)

Thanks to these pieces of information, always related to each other, we can describe what the impact of an eventual modification could be. With the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform, the revisions of each object are managed and the information for each company function can be replaced with precise modification processes.

Once the production list is validated and released, it can be sent to the ERP, even automatically.