Business Value of a Multi-View BOM Approach

How does BOM management fit within your company’s digital thread strategy?

The multi-view approach to lifecycle product structures management is also referred to as the “multi-view BOM approach”. It is a consolidated information resource that contains all the information and maintains all the relationships between the data elements that support Product Engineering, Manufacturing, and Service. Subsequently by taking this approach, companies can achieve automated reconciliation and synchronization across domain views.

CIMdata’s research and industrial consulting activities have closely tracked the topic of multi-view BOM. Over the last five years, commercial PLM solutions have advanced significantly to enable this approach. In response, leaders in many industries are starting to implement multi-view solutions. With the newness and complexity of this application, there is little experience to draw from to identify and predict value. In the eBook linked below, CIMdata describes the expected business value of this BOM strategy.

BOM Management Approaches

A single BOM approach structures engineering content in a manufacturing view, augmented with manufacturing data. It acts as a single authority for release and change, but does not offer a dedicated engineering view and makes change processes slow and costly. Some organizations have opted to maintain separate engineering and manufacturing BOMs. The duel BOM approach offers optimized views for each discipline with the flexibility of independent release and change processes, but there are some obvious negatives with this approach as well. Reconciling and synchronizing data across these separate BOMs often requires costly and time consuming manual processing, risking both errors and process delays.

The multi-view BOM represents the best of both these worlds. Bill of Materials data is centrally maintained, but available to each discipline within an optimized view. This allows independent evolution, with timely release and change. This structure also enables automated reconciliation and synchronization. Finally, the multi-view approach is scalable, allowing additional domains across the enterprise.

Justifying a Move to Multi-View

Those responsible for planning and implementing the transformation of bill of materials management frequently experience an abundance of challenges. First, it can be difficult to position BOM management within the context of a digital thread strategy. On top of this, it can be difficult to articulate the inherent advantages of the multi-view approach against traditional solutions. Understandably, many companies would like to see real-world examples to justify their investment. This eBook covers implementations and business benefits achieved from others who have used the multi-view BOM approach. Further information about managing BOMs across departments, disciplines, and domains can be found in this video produced by Chad Jackson of Lifecycle Insights.

What will I learn in this eBook?

• You will gain an understanding about the interrelated concepts of Digital Thread, lifecycle product structure, and the connection between the four principal product structure configurations.
• You will gain an understanding about the purpose of EBOMs, MBOMs, and SBOMs and the unique strategic benefits of the multi-view BOM approach.
• You will comprehend the state of maturity of multi-view BOM capability available in commercial software and maturity of industrial implementations.
• You will gain an appreciation about the challenges, successes, and value objectives of industry leaders who are implementing multi-view BOM solutions.