BoM – a bad one is a recipe for disaster

Industry needs an agreed-upon set of BoM characteristics or fields. The International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative white paper The Perfect BoM

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is bill of material (BoM).  It’s basically a recipe for a product.  A small company with a simple product — like a bookcase — might use an Excel spreadsheet to create their BoM.  A larger company with a more complex product — like an automobile, for instance — needs a special BoM software application.

The International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative is trying to promote the idea that BoMs should be standardized.  Note the word “International.”  It’s new.

To be “perfect,” the BoM should include everything that goes into the product, from raw
materials such as wire, tape and solder paste, to the box that will be used to ship the product.

It should make parent-child relationships clear, differentiating between components and materials that are part of a sub-assembly versus the overall assembly.

For example, information about programmed parts is typically structured differently from BoM to BoM, and is often open to interpretation. The Perfect BoM should include blank parts as well as the software required to program the blanks, indicating the relationship between components and ensuring that all necessary parts and data are provided.