Bill of Materials is a huge topic. It is hard to underestimate the importance of BOM management in general as well as specifically for PLM systems. I’ve been blogging about BOM many times. Use this custom Google search to browse my previous beyond PLM articles about BOM.
One of the topics I’m debating already long time is so called “single BOM”. I explained my early view on a problem of a single BOM back in 2009 in my post – Seven Rules Towards Single Bill of Materials. Despite most of people you talk to would agree with the idea, the implementation of single BOM in modern enterprise is complicated and challenging. Take a look on another post to get a glimpse of what I’m talking about – Why companies are not ready for single BOM? One of the biggest problem towards achieving of single BOM idea is integration challenges. Today, BOM data resides in many systems in enterprise. Each of these systems provides a specific functional view on BOM management – design, engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, finance, etc. However, the integration of these systems is a very complicated task. In addition to that, the attitude of vendors to lock data to improve the competitiveness of their systems applies additional integration and communication difficulties.
Manufacturing companies have many challenges these days. BOM management is one of them. Despite the fact of complexity of single BOM management strategies, businesses need to have a holistic view of bill of materials. I touched it in my 3 modern BOM management challenges blog post – lean manufacturing, heavy customization, supply and contract manufacturing.
In my view, the problem of BOM management is well understood by industry. I stumble upon one of the old Siemens PLM blog posts written by Nick Pakvasa – BOM Challenges in Automotive Industry. In addition to (obvious) recommendation to use TeamCenter as for enterprise BOM management, article nails down the problem of single BOM. Here is my favorite passage:
The requirement to get the BOM under control at the enterprise level is reaching a critical stage. Exponential increase in software content is driving the requirement to eliminate legacy BOM applications that were structured purely to support older product architectures which were predominantly based on mechanical parts, to an environment that has to deliver integrated BOM management capability for all content in the product. And, to deliver this capability with lifecycle BOM management needs incorporated into the application, and to manage this BOM data starting in the Product Planning phase, through designing, building, selling, servicing and retiring the product. Without integrated enterprise level BOM management supporting all functional areas, geographical locations and external suppliers, partners and joint ventures, actions such as traceability of quality and other imperatives, reuse, BOM access for Service, and lifecycle enterprise change management are either cumbersome, with redundant or non-value added effort, and potential for errors, or in some cases, cannot be executed.
What is my conclusion? The recommendation of all PLM vendors is to use PLM as a central system to manage all BOMs. The recommendation is obvious. However, my hunch is that problem is bigger than it presented by PLM companies and other vendors developing systems producing and requesting data about of BOMs. The complexity of integration, implementation legacy and variety of requirements are creating a very complex application space to manage. In addition to that, high level of competition together with political influence inside of every manufacturing company, make the decision about BOM management one of the most complicated in modern enterprise systems. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
