How to Combine Bill of Materials For a Single Order BOM
The question of combining Bill of Materials often appears in our support box, so I decided to take some time to explain it more in detail.
One example of situations when you would like to combine two or more Bill of Materials is related to engineering to order situations or customer projects. There are other use cases, but for simplicity, let’s go with the option of custom machinery, which is the easiest one. So, you’ve got a Bill of Materials of each equipment piece and now you need to create a custom package.
OpenBOM is an ideal solution to make it happen. Because OpenBOM has embedded function to create parent-child BOM relationships based on Part Numbers for BOMs created manually and automatically via CAD integrations.
The following picture can give you an idea:
OpenBOM gives you a very robust and flexible solution to create such BOM combination and make roll-ups of quantities and other properties (eg. Cost, Mass).
Think about many potential use cases. Actually, I’d love you to share some of them.
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The following video is a quick demonstration of how to do it in OpenBOM. It shows the following step by step scenario:
- show 2 BOMs (multi-levels);
- create a new BOM (top-level);
- add 2 existing BOMs and show that OpenBOM automatically connected it;
- show the flattened report;
- create order BOM and show that parts from both BOMs are calculated together.
Conclusion
OpenBOM provides a robust and scalable infrastructure to organize your BOMs, Parts, and Orders. It is important in custom manufacturing, prototyping, Kits, and many other use cases. It makes work more predictable and simplifies the purchase ordering process.
Share your examples of BOM combinations with me and we would love to share them with a broader community.
Best, Oleg
P.S. Let’s get to know each other better. If you live in the Greater Boston area, I invite you for a coffee together (coffee is on me). If not nearby, let’s have a virtual coffee session — I will figure out how to send you a real coffee.
Want to learn more about PLM? Check out my Beyond PLM blog and PLM Book website.
