The following blog article by Anurag Batra drove my attention today – “Comparing BOM Structures: a multi-faceted need”. The author is asking if “BOM comparison” is needed function in the PLM system and especially interested in the “multi-faceted” Bill of Material comparison. He is asking these questions in the context of enhancements made in the new Agile 9.3. He wrote – “Most PDM, PLM and ERP systems offer the ability to compare Bills of Material structures side by side. Agile have had a BOM Comparison report for many years – it allowed for comparison of multiple BOM structures side by side. With 9.3, we’ve enhanced the report greatly – focusing on the use case of deep multi-level comparison between two BOM structures”. Later in this article Anurag explains new features, how possible to compare multiple levels of multiple release changes etc. According to him, Agile 9.3 version provides excellent features that improve the capability to compare Bill of Materials in multiple ways. I’ve been a bit confused in the end of Anurag’s post by his question to readers, how they actually compare BOMs and what can be possible use cases for newly introduced reports…
Here is my Think Tank question… Do we really want to compare the Bill of Materials? Except for the fact that we always excited by the features and capabilities of our software, I guess the comparison is a very complex task. Each time I’m trying to compare structures, I feel unsecured. To compare multi-level structures that include multiple changes is very complicated, in my view. I’d be very interested to see examples of multi-faceted BOM comparison Anurag is talking about…
Here is my view:
1. Bill of Material comparison is a very complicated task.
2. Designers and Engineers are less interesting “to compare”, but more interesting to find the difference between two versions of designs of product structures.
3. Maybe we need to think about functions in our software that provide “results” and not put users in complicated scenarios of comparing multiple structures?
I’m looking forward to your responses and open discussion…
Best, Oleg
Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing a digital network-based platform that manages product data and connects manufacturers and their supply chain networks. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.
