CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
28 November 2007
CIMdata News
Ask the Expert: How Many BOMs Needed?
In Managing Automation 's Ask the Expert column CIMdata Director of Research, Ken Amann, received the following inquiry "We currently have Teamcenter Engineering as our Design management tool and SAP for PDM and ERP. It has been suggested that we must now only have one BOM in SAP which is only one view so the design view and manufacturing view of the BOM is the same. Designers will effectively be creating the manufacturing BOM as their design. Do you know of any other organisation that does this and can it work efficiently?"
Ken's answer:
The decision as to where to maintain engineering and manufacturing (and other) views of BOMs is dependent on how you wish your organizations to work. There are many organizations that develop their EBOM in a product like Teamcenter and do the MBOM in an ERP system like SAP. Others maintain one master definition in the PLM side (e.g., Teamcenter) and have it maintain multiple views based on discipline (EBOM, MBOM, service BOM, etc.).
Generally the design (EBOM) and the manufacturing (MBOM) views of the BOM are different, as each discipline has different needs and definitions as to how they structure and use a BOM. For example, the MBOM may contain phantom parts or made-on-assembly parts that do not exist in the EBOM view. It is a best practice to have one logical master definition and then to have multiple views of that master for each discipline
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