A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

Engineering change and EBOM to MBOM synchronization complexity

Engineering change and EBOM to MBOM synchronization complexity
Oleg
Oleg
27 November, 2014 | 3 min for reading

eco-mco-ebom-mbom

MBOM (Manufacturing BOM) is a tough problem. Initially, you might think about it as an easy problem. Especially, since companies are managing MBOMs in MRP/ERP systems for a while. However, I think, the time when MBOM was simply originated in MRP system to fulfill demand planning and production orders are gone. And it brings lot of questions and, raise attention from software vendors and implementers. PLM vendors are in the first line of companies demanding the change in the way MBOM is handled.

MBOM is really hard if you want to keep it in sync with rest of product data in engineering and manufacturing. It starts from the moment of time, you understand that your engineering BOM and manufacturing BOM are not the same thing. I touched it earlier in my post – 4 reasons why is hard to deliver MBOM in PLM. The initial creation of MBOM can be technically straightforward. It mostly end up by adding date effectivity element into BOM structure. Within time it gets complicated. And one of the main reasons is synchronization of data. It goes mostly around management of engineering change.

MBOM is a central place to capture the impact of engineering changes and to insure changes are managed correctly and reflected into manufacturing process with relevant dates and references to engineering data (EBOM). The priority of changes are not equal. Organization must handle these priorities and it can result in significant cost differences. Fundamentally you can think about mandatory changes and optional changes. The first one is the change organization will be implementing at any cost. It usually result of failures and regulatory changes. The second one is more interesting. This is where all new development, innovation, design improvements, cost reduction and other things are coming. This is a place where play with effectivity date can be tricky and complex. The sequence of steps are as following:

1- Engineering release or ECO transmit the data about changes in EBOM, which serve as a source of change and provides all required engineering information

2- Manufacturing should introduce these changes into planning process. Timing is important and this process is formal. Some of companies connect it to so called MCO process.

3- All dependencies must be discovered and reflected in changes of MBOM and manufacturing planning.

The last step brings a significant complexity. Engineering information (as it comes from EBOM) often comes incomplete and doesn’t contain all data that must be reflected in a change. There are multiple reasons to that, but in general, engineering view of a product is different from manufacturing one. One of the most typical examples is related to part interchangeability. But, I can see many others too. To synchronize changes between EBOM and MBOM is very complex. However, this complexity and challenges can turn MBOM into next cool thing in PLM.

What is my conclusion? EBOM to MBOM synchronization is a complex process that requires significant data manipulation, data discovery and careful operation. It cannot be automated and it requires a lot of consideration from engineering and manufacturing people. The complexity of modern product and manufacturing processes are introducing the new level of challenges in the way to manage EBOM and MBOM. This sync is critical and companies are demanding tools that can help them to handle it in the right way. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclaimer: I’m the co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM, a digital-thread platform providing cloud-native PDM, PLM, and ERP capabilities. With extensive experience in federated CAD-PDM and PLM architecture, I’m advocates for agile, open product models and cloud technologies in manufacturing. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
27 May, 2015

  You can say that buzz around big data is annoying. At the same time, organization are struggling with a fundamental...

26 September, 2011

One of the most interesting things I learned during Autodesk Forum in Moscow was related to local PLM vendors.  I...

23 January, 2019

Digital transformation is a new darling of technological marketing PLM. It is promising to transform processes and organize data and...

17 August, 2020

I’ve been following the Autodesk platform and PLM development for many years. Autodesk was the first large company that endorsed...

30 July, 2019

One of the biggest competition is competition with the status quo. Exactly one year ago, I wrote about legacy PLM....

12 January, 2017

“Data as a Platform” is one of the most interesting trends to watch these days. I wrote about it in...

15 July, 2010

The question of identification is probably of the most complicated and always raises lots of interest. I had a chance...

3 July, 2021

Graphs and Networks are fascinating. The last two decades of technological development show how powerful connections could be. From the...

26 December, 2023

It’s time to ask yourself: is Excel holding your organization back? Over the last few years, I’ve been talking to...

Blogroll

To the top