Yes, I have come to the conclusion that the Bill of Materials (BOM) child is quite alone… probably because the BOM children were very popular and everybody wanted to take care of them . Just take a look at our closest environment . We do have a Bill of Materials in CAD/design, Engineering, Manufacturing, Support and Maintenance…. As I mentioned in my previous post, Search for the right BOM – I’m feeling lucky?, finding the right Bill of Materials in an enterprise environment is not simple.
So, the question I wanted to ask is how can we improve Bill of Materials, which fundamentally represents everything in Product Lifecycle Management – from the early requirements and design until production and disposal. My initial idea was about a synchronized BOM (Is it time for a synchronized Bill of Materials?). The biggest challenge I found is actually Bill of Materials separated by multiple systems in the organization. I’m sure you are very familiar with this problem. Bill of Materials have many flavors where each system tries to manage its own flavor of Bill of Materials. As a result, we have NO Bill of Materials.
I have seen a few trends in Bill of Materials management as of today:
1. Master trend. This is probably the oldest one. The idea is quite straightforward and based on trying to build master-relationships for the Bill of Materials. So far, when you have a master, you supposed don’t have a problem with multiple BOMs. But, to define such “master behavior” is difficult, and the process of master definition spans across time, products and technologies within the organization. It may work, in my view, in quite a synchronized and centralized environment. But if you take a more detailed look, you will find “another small BOM” somewhere around :)….
2. Multi-BOM trend. This one is quite established. As we said, there are many Bill of Materials – here we have an answer. We can manage many BOMs! With all the technologies we have today, we can manage as many as we want. Where is Catch 22? The governance model for Bill of Materials in this case becomes very problematic. Now we have too many BOMs and they are trying to state their single point of truth about what is going on with a product. Multiple tools around this problem can help you to compare, change, and even find inconsistencies, but the overall system becomes quite unstable, in my opinion…
3. Process trend. This is a new one, I discovered. We don’t manage Bill of Materials anymore. We do manage processes for organizations. Design, Engineering, Manufacturing. This sounds very reasonable. Process can formalize our activity around data and provide a reliable way to manage our ancient data life on a different level. So, in other words, – BOM is stupid and the process is smart. So far so good… Process management is a big scope. To implement it for an organization is not a simple task at all…. I’m just afraid, this is too much for “my small BOM child” :)…
So, what is my conclusion? I think we are still an the age where we need to find better technologies for managing Bill of Material(s). Do you know of any alternatives? I’m looking how to resolve the BOM problem within an organization and beyond…
Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.
