Bill of Material - BOM

What Is a Bill of Materials (BOM)?

A bill of materials (BOM) is used within a manufacturing or production environment to list all the parts and their features required to produce a sub-assembly or end product.

How to Make a Bill of Materials

To generate a bill of materials, requires data to be extracted from a planning system, such as an MRP or ERP operating system.  The term ‘A BOM explosion’ is the method used to generate a full list of all the parts including all those in sub-assemblies that are required in order to make a pass of finished goods.  Each individual MRP or ERP system will have its own method of extracting this data.

To put this into context, if planning and production are to make 100 tables as a finished product, they will require components of:

• 100 x table tops
• 400 x table legs
• 400 x brackets for bolting each leg to the table
• 800 x bolts (2 for each table leg fixing)

What Is a Bill of Materials Used For?

Once the BOM has been exploded down to components level, procurement can identify all of the component parts that need to be on site in order for the production run to take place.  Procurement can identify existing stock availability and any components not available procurement can then look to source from the market and place orders with the manufacturers.

Does a Bill of Material Include Labour?

A standard Bill of Materials (BoM) does not factor in labour requirements, however It can be linked to production scheduling and incorporate equipment capacity and availability, and fully integrated into a manufacturing resource planning (MRP) module.

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