Wikipedia defines Bill of materials (BOM) as a list of the raw materials, sub-assemblies, intermediate assemblies, sub-components, components, parts and the quantities of each needed to manufacture an end item (final product) .

It add that it may be used for communication between manufacturing partners, or confined to a single manufacturing plant.

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). The different types of BOMs depend on the business need and use for which they are intended. 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.

BOMs are hierarchical in nature with the top level representing the finished product which may be a sub-assembly or a completed item. BOMs that describe the sub-assemblies are referred to as modular BOMs. An example of this is the NAAMS BOM that is used in the automotive industry to list all the components in an assembly line. The structure of the NAAMS BOM is System, Line, Tool, Unit and Detail.

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

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 that displays the assembly or sub-assembly with only one level of children. Thus it displays the components directly needed to make the assembly or sub-assembly.
• An indented BOM that 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.

Bill of materials – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Most Bill of Materials are written up in Excel or Word, PDXpert lets you do this in Visio.

It can create parts and documents in multi-level structures. For example, a PLM structure combines the features of a bill of materials with the supporting technical documentation traditionally depicted using a document tree. The assembly parts list (i.e. quantities, units of measure, reference designators) includes all relevant assembly drawings and instructions, inspection procedures, and specifications.

Read more about Creating a graphical bill of materials in Visio or download a MS Word Bill of Materials Template.

I’ve written a lot of tech docs for SAP applications over the years. One of the cheat sheets that I’ve found very helpful has been this list of SAP BOM Transaction Codes. It helped a great deal when working my way thru the interface, which as you know, can be a bit tricky in SAP.

Download: Bill of Materials Template

CS00 BOM Menu
CS01 Create Material BOM
CS02 Change Material BOM
CS03 Display Material BOM
CS05 Change Material BOM Group
CS06 Display Material BOM Group
CS07 Allocate Material BOM to Plant
CS08 Change Material BOM – Plant Alloc.
CS09 Display Allocations to Plant
CS11 Display BOM Level by Level
CS12 Multilevel BOM
CS13 Summarized BOM
CS14 BOM Comparison
CS15 Single-Level Where-Used List
CS20 Mass Change: Initial Screen
CS21 Mass Material Change: Initial Screen
CS22 Mass Document Change: Initial Screen
CS23 Mass Class Change: Initial Screen
CS25 Archiving for BOMs
CS26 BOM deletion
CS27 Retrieval of BOMs
CS28 Archiving for BOMs
CS31 Create class BOM
CS32 Change class BOM
CS33 Display class BOM
CS40 Create Link to Configurable Material
CS41 Change Material Config. Allocation
CS42 Display Material Config. Assignment
CS51 Create standard BOM
CS52 Change standard BOM
CS53 Display standard BOM
CS61 Create Order BOM
CS62 Change Order BOM
CS63 Display Order BOM
CS71 Create WBS BOM
CS72 Change WBS BOM
CS73 Display WBS BOM
CS74 Create multi-level WBS BOM
CS75 Change multi-level WBS BOM
CS76 Display multi-level WBS BOM
CS80 Change Documents for Material BOM
CS81 Change Documents for Standard BOM
CS82 Change documents for sales order BOM
CS83 Change documents for WBS BOM
CS84 Change documents for class BOM
CS90 Material BOM Number Ranges
CS91 Number Ranges for Standard BOMs
CS92 Number Ranges for Sales Order BOMs

Download: Bill of Materials Template

Bill Lewis describes a model for application requirements based on a bill-of-materials metamodel. In it he shows how “the imprecise and ambiguous nature of business requirements as a major factor contributing to the high costs and low success rates in system development efforts.”

He adds that while it’s easy for narrative descriptions of business processes to be imprecise and ambiguous, and business requirements documents usually focus on business processes. Data requirements, often an afterthought, are usually relegated to an appendix. The Requirements Bill of Materials

Download MS Word Template Business Requirements Template

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

Our partner site, Klariti.com, has released a Bill of Materials template. It’s only $7.99 until month-end and then goes to full price.

Download: Bill of Materials template. Word/Excel 97-2007.

PS: We’ve just finished a series of templates with their Word templates designers, so stay tuned as more templates will be published this week.