Why is BoM Management important?
Accurately managing the holistic bill of materials (BoM) across fragmented teams, processes and systems can present bottlenecks for many businesses – regardless of whether your product consists of ten parts or ten millions parts, that´s why it´s important to have a BoM Management strategy. For most manufacturers today, product data is not only richer and more varied, but it quickly evolves over time. When departments maintain their own individual BOM definition, challenges such as inconsistencies across data sets, poor visibility of the impact of change, and wasted time reconciling data between systems become present.
The challenges with BoM Management
Supporting activities across standalone spreadsheets and vault systems can commonly lead to the following challenges:
- Part redundancies
- Release delays
- Slow collaboration between departments and suppliers
- Increased spend on part proliferation, reuse and scrap
In our experience, these challenges are most commonly experienced among businesses who enquire about our services.
So why are BOMs so important?
Without removing the ambiguity of the above, businesses may struggle to reliably reproduce their products and control them for quality. As a result the following areas are at risk:
- Quality control
- Product reliability
- Regulatory compliance
- Brand consistency
With the right BOM strategy is place, businesses are able to capture, configure and manage their product information during every step of the product lifecycle with a complete and digitalized product structure. Through the use of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), businesses are able to control a single source of correct information related to CAD models, drawings, documentation, part structures and other relevant product information. Consequently, complexity in data, processes and systems are reduced– resulting in great efficiencies and shorter lead times.
Whilst this approach can be transformative for the business, the effort required to achieve these efficiencies doesn’t require an overhaul of current processes and incumbent systems. Instead, digital transformations can be achieve based on a scalable roadmap that meets priorities and business needs one step at a time. This way, disruption is kept to a minimum and tangible business improvements are realized at a rapid pace, enter having a modern BOM management system.
Modern BOM Management System
By adopting a modern BOM management system, your business is taking the first step in a digital transformation strategy, and requires a list of key requirements. Modern BOM management systems should anticipate the following key requirements:
- Engineering teams’ needs for CAD design and collaboration
- Product phases and lifecycle planning that allows for components to be released on schedule
- BOM-Level detail around costings that allow procurement to identify preferred suppliers and refine pricing
- Production, compliance and specification documentation managed securely and centrally for internal and external teams
- ERP integration so components can be automated into production systems without manual intervention
- Electronic sign off and access control for accurate and traceable audit trails
These key requirements for successful BOM management can all be found in PTC’s industry-leading Windchill PLM system. Our PLM experts are constantly supporting our existing customers with managing their BOM in the most seamless and easiest way with the use of PTC Windchill.
Find out how your business can take the first step in its digital transformation strategy with PTC’s Windchill PLM Software.
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