UK company Bytesnap has released a manufacturers’ guide to creating and maintaining Bills of Materials for their products. Such documents serve several functions, notably acting as a security checklist that tracks the components of any project, and thereby acting as a verifiable source of trust between manufacturer and customers.
Yet a Bill of Materials (BOM) is more than a parts list, it’s a blueprint defining every component, sub-assembly, material, and quantity needed to build a product.
In modern manufacturing, especially in the electronics segment, a well-managed BOM is the central record that ties design, procurement, supply chain, production planning, and cost control together.
What distinguishes a production-ready BOM
A production BOM includes everything required for real-world manufacturing and risk management, so has operational and security/risk value. At a minimum, a BOM should include
- a unique manufacturer part number (MPN) for every component,
- reference designators ensuring accurate assembly,
- part descriptions and technical specs to aid procurement,
- definitions of quantities and units of measure,
- approved supplier data and pre-qualified alternatives for important parts,
- lead times and obsolescence information,
- version-control tracking.
A BOM needs to be a ‘living’ document, updated continuously as designs or supply-chains change.
Why BOMs matter
Reactive or after-the-fact BOM management is expensive in terms of associated costs. Missing parts, obsolescence, or ambiguous specifications will mean that problems surface late, sometimes during manufacturing. That causes delays, the need for last-minute substitutions, quality issues, compromise, and inconsistent builds.
Tracking lifecycle data and sourcing alternatives creates resilient supply-chains, which in electronics in particular, can be highly volatile. Ultimately, a robust BOM helps financial and operational forecasting, margin control and predictions, and better delivery of highly-performant products.
BOM sub-types
There are several different types of BOM, which serve specific purposes. Engineering BOMs should reflect the product as it exists in CAD data. Manufacturing BOMs address physical assembly, and include the full gamut of materials, including consumables, packaging, required tooling, and details of production processes. Finally, sales or service BOMs are invaluable to users or installers configuring, installing, or maintaining devices.
Operational imperatives
- BOMs should be living documents, updated for changing designs or sources,
- businesses should use BOMs to assign ownership and responsibility internally,
- version control should be verbose, with data like revision history, authors, and all change detailed,
- creating and maintaining BOMs needs to involve procurement, supply-chain, and quality assessment teams,
- proper documentation can expose supply chain and quality issues that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
These types of governance measures can reduce ambiguity and create better continuity between engineering and manufacturing.
Internal or outsourced BOM management
Some organisations may struggle to create and maintain BOMs properly. That’s especially true when there are many product lines, variants, or products expected to last years in place on customer premises. Outsourcing helps companies whose engineering teams are already working at capacity (and/or where engineers would prefer not to be side-tracked). Finally, companies where there is significant staff ‘churn’ might benefit from outsourced BOM management – offering a welcome continuity in the long-term.
BOM strategy: thoughts and conclusions
A Bill of Materials may be a technical document, but in many areas of manufacturing it can shape cost, define risk, ensure quality, and make products more resilient. Treating the BOM as a strategic asset under firm oversight means companies are forced less often into reactive situations, and can develop strategies that rest on the predictability granted by production-ready BOMs.
The humble BOM strengthens competitiveness, improves margins, and builds long-term resilience in supply chains – and bottom-line figures, too.
(Image source: “Electronics Manufacturing” by focal5 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)
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