Chefs use them. Artists use them. Manufacturer and job shop project managers use them, too. When you have a project involving any number of materials or other physical elements, having a complete listing of those materials, ordered in some logical way, is a helpful tool to stay on-track and on-schedule throughout the production process. For chefs, having the recipe lets them know what material they need to complete a dish, and what materials to order should they be out of certain ingredients-as-inventory. For artists, the requirements to stretch, prime, and paint the canvas involve considerable forethought regarding material and material costing.

For manufacturers and job shops, the Bill of Materials (BOM) provides a complete listing or set of the physical elements needed to produce or otherwise service a product. BOM requirements dictate that all elements be included in order to provide not only an accurate cost accounting of the materials, but to ensure that parts, assemblies, and services are done with quality in mind.

To bring ease of understanding to the material requirements found within the BOM, it is formatted in such a way that each element (i.e., raw materials, parts, sub-assemblies, etc.) is clearly broken out and indented down to the lowest level. Thus, the result is usually an orderly reading of the BOM in a printed document, computer screen readout, or both.

From this organization of unit production elements, a project manager (or purchasing manager) will then order any supplies not already in stock or on order for delivery. Certainly, advances in enterprise resource planning software (ERP) over the last two decades have made anticipating and ordering production materials an art form. Using real time data collection from all over a shop operation, ERP software that manages BOM purchasing coordinates inventory with scheduling, shipping with receiving. In addition to maintaining the lowest possible inventory counts, BOMs can also help locate details/histories about supply vendors and their pricing.

A project manager module located within a robust ERP software solution also allows the creation and maintenance of components parts listings from eBOMs (i.e., engineering BOMs) and mBOMSs (i.e., manufacturing BOMs). To this end, a BOM will help a manager more closely watch the types and quality of work that his/her company produces.

It is a central source of information that supports a variety of production management decisions, and it is therefore seen as something vital in maintaining control over production in the first instance beyond the sales order. Conversely, any inaccuracies in the information shown in the BOM can result in costly errors in estimate versus actual accounting, as well as unnecessarily high inventory levels and dissatisfied customers.

In manufacturing and job shop operations, the management of jobs and projects begins with a clear and accurate BOM. With the material requirement details worked out on the front end, projects will not only run on time and with quality, but with true costs known before, during, and after the job. In short, accurate and detailed BOMs are recipes for manufacturing success.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Shop Floor, Purchasing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.