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Part Numbers

BOM 101: Preliminary Product Structures and Part Numbers

by Oleg on February 1, 2013 · 2 comments

I want to continue my BOM 101 thoughts and speak about working with Bill of Materials during early stages of product development. Engineers are using multiple sources of information to create an initial Bill of Materials. The initial BOM structure can come from CAD system, other BOMs developed earlier and also created from scratch. One of the important steps during this process is to assign Part Numbers as early as possible.

Part Numbers (PN) and development lifecycle process

Initial PN allocation plays a key role in overall product development process. From the moment we assign Part Numbers, the status of product development can be tracked by the Item Lifecycle mechanism. Newly created PN are obviously getting “development” status. However, measurement of time lapsed since PN assignment until Item actually entered into BOM and later until specification document becomes available will allow you to follow process of development on the very early stage.

Par Number and PLM/ERP integration

Part Number assignment requires some degree of system integration. The easiest way to get things done is to manage PN in your PLM systems. However, a reality is different. Very often, item master is managed by ERP system or another data management system. It can be also home grown database that historically keeps record of Item masters and allocate Part numbers. So, to integrate these systems will be extremely important to manage Items lifecycle in the company.

What is my conclusion? It is very important to have item lifecycle started at the very early stage of product development. Unfortunately, very often companies are postponing this step because of the integration complexity. PLM/ERP integration project is starting on the late phase of PDM/PLM implementation. Internal company politics are adding an additional level of complexity  to this decision. It takes weeks or even monts to decide where to manage Item Masters. A significant portion of product cost is defined during early stage of the development. To have early BOM/PN visibility can optimize the process. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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BOM 101: The four pillars of every BOM management solution

by Oleg on January 17, 2013 · 3 comments

I suggest you an experiment. Invite two engineers and ask them to provide a definition for some of PDM/PLM related terms. I’d not be surprised if you will get more than two definitions. It is not unusual to spend lots of time during PLM software implementation meetings to define terms, language and meaning of things. Regardless on terminology, I found BOM to be a central element in every product development organization and business. It contains a recipe of your product, process and, at the end of the day, becomes a lifeblood of your product development processes. Thinking about BOM management solution, I can see four major things that need to be defined, discussed and clarified.

BOM and Part Lists

Bill of Materials (BOM) is a list of all items required to make a parent item. It includes components, raw materials and sub-assemblies. You may also include intermediate items identifying in-process elements to facilitate planning and other manufacturing processes. Depends on industry, people can call BOM differently. For example, in process industry, it can be called recipe or formula. Opposite to BOM, Part List is usually a term used to call a single level list for a specific level of assembly or sub-assembly.

Part Number 

This is one of the most tricky defined terms in a whole product development and BOM management story. Here is a short definition. Part Number (PN) is an unique identifier that identify a single object in bill of material. However, the trick is how to define object and how to keep it consistent with your processes. Assigning part numbers is often complicated and one of the most discussed topics. The traditional definition of FFF (Form, Fit and Function) helps to identify the right objects. Interchangeable parts, substitiute items, special parts – this is only a short list of issues that comes into the discussion around part numbering process.

Routing 

Think about navigation system with the road between different places. Now imagine part numbers. Routing is a roadmap that defines the path of part numbers across manufacturing floor by specifying workstations and labor time associated with every station. Usually routing applied to manufactured parts or items.

Drawings

Drawings represents a significant part of history and confusing engineering habits. Historically, drawing is the place where people put bill of materials for a product. It also solves the problem of Bill of Materials distribution in the company. At the same time, BOM on a drawing brings lots of disadvantages. In many situations, people don’t need drawing, but only need bill of materials and/or part list. Another point of confusion is numbering system. The discussion is about applying part numbers on drawings. In most of the situations, it represents the limitation of systems used for product development (PDM/PLM). To separate between Part Numbers and Document Numbers is the most reasonable ways to manage it, in my view.

What is my conclusion? Regardless of what systems you plan to use, I recommend you to have cross-department organizational discussion about these four pillars. Usually, it helps to understand product development processes. Engineering and manufacturing are two main organizations usually involved into BOM processes. To clarify terms will give you a tremendous value during PDM/PLM system implementation and integration with ERP. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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Part numbers and External Classification Schemas

by Oleg on February 7, 2012 · 16 comments

I want to talk about Part Numbers. Yes, Part Numbers, again… My previous blog – Part Numbering and the future of identification raised few interesting conversations. So, I decided to open a Pandora box of part numbering. The formal trigger for this conversation was Arena Solutions blog – Three consideration when choosing Part Numbering schema for you. Here is passage that actually made me think about the fact we are doing something wrong:

Choosing a part numbering scheme is one of the more important decisions you make as you move toward production… Once you commit to a part numbering scheme, you are married to it for a long time to come, so you need to be 100% sure it is nimble enough to evolve and scale right along with you...

It sounded like a Catholic marriage. Once you decided about part numbering, you are done for many years. The same Arena’s blog post mentioned some external tools you can use to generate part numbers – part-numbering.com and partnumber.com.

The idea that stroke me earlier today is that most of the companies are using “smart Part Numbers” in order to simplify part search, re-use and, even more fundamentally, classification. Type of part, organization, suppliers – these are only small elements of “an intelligent part number”. What if some “smart applications” are available that can add classification information to existing part numbers in order to enrich (actually to annotate) Part Number identification. These tools can be web-based and even applied to existing data in the company.

What is my conclusion? We need to re-think some very fundamental elements and concepts of product development, PDM and PLM. The ability to enrich data without building lots of sophistication in the Part Numbering is something that can make PDM / PLM systems more flexible and drive cost of changes down. I’d be interested how to support it in existing PDM/PLM systems. Not sure if it is a simple task. However, I’m curious if new PLM software coming tomorrow to market from companies like Autodesk will have a different set of capabilities to solve the problem of Part Numbering and identification. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

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A Geek’s View on Part Numbers

August 17, 2011

I feel a bit geeky today. I posted about part numbers, document number and numbering few times in the past. These posts sparkled an intensive discussion about all possible and impossible data schemas, intelligent numbers and standards for part numbering. I want to give you a bit different approach to think about Part Numbers – [...]

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