Bill of Materials (BOM) Management Challenges

I wouldn't know. I'm technical repair department not a office bean counter. How they justify things on paper and when t throw them away is not my problem.

My only concern is how do I acquire those obsoleted NOS inventory items for myself for as little as possible before they hit the dumpster so I can resell them at a substantial profit for myself later to those more intelligent people else who don't bow down to the false gods of inventory paperwork idiocy.

For us in nuclear field, we require some more typical info’s, like: material class/standard, main dimensions/rating, component dimensional/rating standard, supplier catalogue/drawing no., quality level, ASME Code class/non-nuclear, seismic qualification (if the case), specific data sheet (if the case), weight. The challenge is that the supplier is reluctant or goes on the easy way to provide the all requested information. The best approach is to attach to the engineering PR (Purchase Requisition), the BOM table header including all required info’s, so the potential supplier be aware upfront of all requirements.

BOM's are indeed extremely important to any one trying to build something repeatably. I, unfortunately, use a lot of drawings supplied by my customers and have seen very few of them that are accurate and/or complete enough to be able to fabricate what the customer wants. I'm not even talking "rocket" science here either, just what should be straight forward fabrications(at least to me).

Fortunately, I have been around long enough and worked enough different industries that I can interpret what is required and ask,politely(and sometimes withholding my laughter), intelligent questions of my customers to verify exactly what they need(not the same as want).

BOM's are only as good as the people who make them, and,,, these days it seems that all one needs to be called a "☻designer☻" are a few CAD courses and someone willing to hire you. It also appears that once hired, there is no further training given, and probably no guidance as well, as you are supposed to know what to do, at least in my current industry. I see it time and again, and can tell by who put their initials/name on the drawings of how close I have to scrutinize them and how much difficulty I am going to have in the fabrication stages.

We manufacture machinery. We do have a BOM for each machine, right down to the individual parts. We use IBM AS/400, that has been modified to keep track of all the material flow and labor and costs. The only challenges are for people that create the machines, to update as required when there are material changes and paying attention to unit of measure and to ensure that the right codes are set to identify the part as being made in house or outsourced.

We used to order extra parts to lower the cost of the parts. We've stopped doing that. It is better to pay a higher price for a lower number of parts and only ordering what you need because with all the extra parts that are carried over to the next year, you end up having to pay rent on that unused inventory which ends up costing more than what you saved on ordering extra parts.

I know and can see your point about "common" parts. For me it all depends on my crystal ball of what I think we will receive for orders and then the good old fashioned "economic order quantity" calculation which includes the inventory carrying costs.

Updating is also very-no extremely- important and I am surprised how many companies/individuals just let those "minor" little things slip by, and then pay the consequences later. It may take some time to update, but it always pay off in the long run.

I used to be an assembly/technician on large mailing machines. The build order for each system included a list of options. The BOM was for the "stock" system and each option included a Put/Take list that the materials department would use to correct the BOM as required to maintain inventory accuracy. Since the price these systems ran well into 6 figures, and it was common for a customer to purchase more than one, it was also common for senior management, engineering and representatives from the customer to visit during construction to monitor progress and expresses concerns. It was one such meeting on one of my systems when the customer spoke of how the mail was not "driven" through an area where one option was not ordered and requested the situation be rectified. Unintentionally stepping on the toes of some of the engineers I spoke up explaining why this could not be done. A short while later the meeting ended and it was time for me to resume my work. Instead I walked off to the build area where that part of the machine was built and set about grabbing parts off of shelves, modified the base plate for that section and returned to the system. 15 minutes of engineering on the fly later and the system was up and running with the mail pieces driven as requested. Most of the people that were there for the meeting were still standing around the machine while all of this took place. Later that day my presence was requested in engineering. They needed me to mark up the drawing to the base plate reflecting my changes along with a Put/Take list reflecting my alteration. They needed to put together 3 kits to ship out immediately to the field for retrofitting systems in operation and informed me that all new systems going forward, without that option, would be built to "my" design. (Changes like this often took months to approve and implement but a real time demonstration leading to a very satisfied customer could move things along faster). While I understood how the BOM and Put/Take lists worked this experience gave me a much deeper appreciation for it all.