I just finished writing online help for a SAP application. A lot of this involved using the Bill of Materials component aka BOM. If you want to know more about Bill of Materials, take a look at this brief intro.
A Bill of Materials, also known as a BOM, is a list of the raw materials, sub-assemblies, intermediate assemblies, sub-components, components, parts and the quantities of each needed to manufacture an item. It is often used when manufacturing companies want to communicate to their partners or even among other manufacturing plant.

Download: Bill of Materials Template

What does a Bill of Materials do?

A BOM can define products as they are designed (engineering bill of materials), as they are ordered (sales bill of materials), as they are built (manufacturing bill of materials), or as they are maintained (service bill of materials).

Are there different types of Bill of Materials?

Different types of BOMs depend on the business need and use for which they are intended. For example:

• In process industries, the BOM is also known as the formula, recipe, or ingredients list.
• In electronics, the BOM represents the list of components used on the printed wiring board or printed circuit board.

Once the design of the circuit is completed, the BOM list is passed on to the PCB layout engineer as well as component engineer who will procure the components required for the design.

How are they structured?

BOMs are hierarchical in nature. The top level represents the finished product, which may a completed item.

BOMs that describe the sub-assemblies are referred to as modular BOMs.
For example: the NAAMS BOM used in the automotive industry lists all components in an assembly line.

The structure of the NAAMS BOM is:

• System
• Line
• Tool
• Unit
• Detail

The first hierarchical databases were developed for automating bills of materials for manufacturing organizations in the early 1960s.

Implosions and Explosions

A bill of materials “implosion” links component pieces to a major assembly, while a bill of materials “explosion” breaks apart each assembly or sub-assembly into its component parts.

A BOM can be displayed in the following formats:

• A single-level BOM – displays the assembly or sub-assembly with only one level of children.
• An indented BOM – displays the highest-level item closest to the left margin and the components used in that item indented more to the right.

A BOM can also be visually represented by a product structure tree, although they are rarely used in the workplace.

Engineering Bill of materials

An engineering bill of materials (EBOM) reflects the product as designed by engineering, referred to as the “as-designed” bill of materials. The EBOM is not related to modular BOM or configurable BOM (CBOM) concepts, as modular and configurable BOMs are used to reflect selection of items to create saleable end-products.

The EBOM concept aligns to sales BOMs (as sold), service BOMs (as changed based on changes due to field service). This BOM includes all substitute and alternate part numbers, and includes parts that are contained in drawing notes.

Configurable Bill Of Materials

A configurable bill of materials (CBOM) is a used by industries that have multiple options and highly configurable products, such as telecom systems, data-center hardware (SANS, servers, etc.), and PCs.

The CBOM is used to dynamically create “end-items” that a company sells. The benefit of using CBOM structure is it reduces the work-effort required to maintain product structures.

The configurable BOM is most frequently driven by “configurator” software. However it can also be enabled manually.

Note that manual maintenance is infrequent because it is unwieldy to manage the number of permutations and combinations of possible configurations.

While most configurators use top-down hierarchical rules syntax to find appropriate modular BOMs, maintenance of very similar BOMs becomes highly excessive.

A newer approach, (Bottom-Up/Rules-Based Structuring) utilizing a proprietary search engine scheme transversing through selectable componentry at high speeds eliminates the Planning Modular BOM duplications.

The search engine is also used for all combinatorial feature constraints and GUI representations to support specification selections.

Bill of Materials in Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0

Microsoft offers this course for Bill of Materials in Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0. This collection provides students with the knowledge and skills to work with Bill of Materials (BOMs) in a Trade and Logistics environment. Each tutorial covers a main feature, including how to create and work with BOMs and BOM versions, configuration and calculation functionality, sales orders and BOMs, reporting BOMs as finished, BOM reports and other relevant functionality.

• Describe BOM/BOM version concepts, creation, and functionality.
  Create quantity dependent BOMs.
• Explain BOM and item configurations.
• Outline BOM calculation structure, setup and processing.
• Create sales orders from configurable BOMs.
• Set up and describe constant and variable scrap.
• Explain and set up measurement configuration.
• Outline the process of reporting a BOM as finished.
• Describe standard BOM reports, changes and sorting BOM lines.

https://www.microsoftelearning.com

Benefits

eVision discuss some of the benefits of their Manufacturing Bill of Materials application.

Enable more precise management of materials, components, and assemblies, including their costs, locations, and routing sequences for tighter control of finished goods, lower costs, higher productivity, and greater profitability.

Create different types of bills that meet the specific needs of your products: engineering bills, manufactured bills, configured bills, archived bills, even super bills that manage all options on the configurable products you produce.

Eliminate delays by providing bills with alternate components built in to respond to potential shortages. Pass along savings derived from tighter control of costs and materials.

Maintain an active bill of materials for each item to track components currently in use and manage bills in production. Engineering bills make visible the effects of engineering change orders on costs and integrate easily with other applications. You can also maintain an unlimited number of archived bills, as well as create phantom bills for subassemblies that do not get stocked as an inventory item.

Exert more control over manufacturing by precisely managing the details of product components. Getting a firm handle on parameters like start and end dates, lead times, and shrinkage factors can help drive down cycle times, increase throughput, and make you more competitive in accelerating markets.

Download: Bill of Materials Template

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