Why Integrated BOM?

Your bill of material (BOM) is central to developing and building commercial products. The quality of your integrated BOMs has a direct impact on the quality of your products, as well as the profitability of your company. We’ve been exploring many different aspects of BOM management and BOM configuration management across domains that reach far beyond design. In this discussion, my colleague Anup Jain takes a look at this topic from the perspective of the manufacturing BOM.

Learn more by watching this webinar, “Multi-domain BOM management,” as part of our webinar series on strategies to streamline product innovation.

BOM complexity has grown over time in many ways, including increased product variety and multi-discipline content authoring in the areas of mechanical, electronics & embedded software. Moreover, with the emergence of global markets and competition, many companies have adopted a ‘Design, Build, Sell and Support Anywhere’ strategy. Product content is being authored and managed by multiple globally distributed teams which put enormous pressure in terms of product information integration and accuracy. Companies are adopting complex sourcing and manufacturing strategies to get the right economies of scale to maximize profits.

Historically, manufacturing planning engineers have been copying the released EBOM and modifying the same with manufacturing-related information, and creating a new set of records known as the manufacturing BOM (MBOM). With the source EBOM ever-evolving, there is continuous pressure to keep the MBOM in synch with the EBOM – for that matter I would say for all kinds of derived BOMs including after-sales BOM leading to errors and in-accurate BOMs.

The Integrated Product Definition (IPD) in Teamcenter provides key configuration and product definition constructs that allow manufacturing planners to access and augment engineering BOM with manufacturing information such that a centralized or plant-specific manufacturing BOM view that is relevant for product manufacturing can be configured directly rather than through a ‘copy and reconcile’ approach.

Product information known as EBOM, released by the product development team, primarily consists of quantified parts & assemblies linked to CAD geometry in a position configured by options and variants. EBOM is typically released in the form of assemblies, sub-assemblies & components that are normally organized in a function-oriented structure.

Manufacturing information, or MBOM, is typically the parts in a specific order that can be sourced and combined to manufacture a product. Additionally, MBOM includes phantom assemblies that are not present in the EBOM. MBOM embodies the sourcing strategy that could be different for different plants for the same product driven by the manufacturing process. MBOM is typically consumed in a process BOM that describes the manufacturing operation sequences coupled with takt time, space, tooling, and other resources needed to manufacture the product

In some companies, EBOM may sometimes correspond to end item assemblies that can be directly sourced and assembled by a plant. In this case, EBOM approximates the MBOM.

While EBOM is organized in a functionally decomposed architecture view, Manufacturing BOM is organized in a manufacturing process architecture view that is line-oriented.

MBOM is based on the part master, unlike EBOM which is version-driven.

The Integrated Product Definition (IPD) Approach for Manufacturing BOM Management

Manufacturing specific augmentation of engineering BOM information is authored either directly on or with relationship to engineering authored master records. Manufacturing views are configured out of the integrated BOM information.

It is possible for the manufacturing planning engineers to create and introduce manufacturing specific parts like raw materials and consumables, phantom assemblies in the engineering structure by using distinct manufacturing relationships that are released and managed by manufacturing change orders.

Manufacturing information is added to EBOM in terms of the declaration of alternate, substitute, and vendor parts.

Procurement planning records in the form of manufacturing plant, sourcing strategy driven by plant-specific effectivity dates are created and associated with engineering records. Procurement planning records controlled by manufacturing change orders per plant drive procurement planning & tracking using plant incorporation information when linked to MRP / ERP systems.

Effectivity-based plant-specific configuration applied to the integrated BOM view generates the parts list for a specific or a generic plant based on the input production order. Manufacturing augmented engineering BOM records can thus be configured for engineering or plant-specific parts lists.

The system can be suitably automated based on configured Teamcenter workflows to generate logic-based procurement records with minimum user intervention. Integrated change management is the backbone for the creation and management of engineering, manufacturing & after-sales bill of material views.

 My last blog titled ‘Product Architecture Breakdown Guides Product Engineering’ talked about – how architecture breakdowns can be used to manage manufacturing & service views of a product. Under the manufacturing architecture view of the product, manufacturing operations consume the augmented engineering part records supplemented with manufacturing information.

The Integrated Product Definition in Teamcenter promotes a collaborative approach that enables better information flow between manufacturing planners and core product development engineers, enabling greater efficiencies and value for the entire product lifecycle.

 Anup Jain has over 25 years of experience in the area of Product Development in the Mobility & Transportation sector coupled with PLM software definition. He is currently a Product Manager at Siemens PLM Software for Teamcenter Bill of Material Management.