Bill of Material

A strong bill of material processor can help manage and analyze the components and products your company produces. Macola ES's Bill of Material (BOM) module gives you those features. Plus, BOM is extremely flexible, incorporating powerful visual tools that integrate with Shop Floor Control (SFC) and Production Order Processing (POP) modules.

Important advantages of Bill of Material are:

• Graphically interactive BOM maintenance
• Support make-to-order
• Multiple options selectable within a single feature
• Gross Requirements Reporting, for basic material planning
• Costed BOM Report
• Bill of resource

This is a very interactive and graphical interface for maintaining your BOM. If Standard Routing (S/R) is used, Bill of Resource allows you to view routings graphically. Optionally, historical BOMs and engineering changes can be displayed and maintained as well.

BOM's Visual Bill of Resource establishes the link between a single inventory item and the components that comprise the finished good. Each component includes a Reference Designator which allows you to detail exactly what it does and where it can be found. You also have the option to print Reference Designators on BOM's Indented Report or on production work orders. Plus, you can choose to display Reference Designators in the view function to quickly access information for further reporting power. A BOM is created by specifying the relationships between pairs of items where one is a parent (an item that is assembled with other components). A parent will have relationships with one or more component items. The same components may be used in many different assemblies within your manufacturing facility to construct different parent items. You specify each component-parent relationship through the graphical environment.

BOM also provides you with the ability to define how much of each component is normally scrapped or lost in shrinkage, allowing you to be more accurate in estimating component usage. In addition, BOM tracks component level effectivity dates and default locations for each component. This allows you to phase material in and out, managing engineering changes based on date effectivity. Various safeguards assure valid data. For example, BOM prevents you from making an item a component of itself, or from using an item that is not defined in the Inventory Management (I/M) package.

Feature/options configuration

There are times when it is appropriate to configure a product to meet a customer's unique requirement. The Feature/Options Product Configurator application, which comes as part of BOM, enables you to establish rules-based configurations for use in the order entry process. This BOM application also enables you to analyze the features (or parent items) along with options (or components). This gives you the flexibility you need to configure your products with all of the options a customer may need. Plus, Feature/Options Configuration enables your system to maintain top-speed performance by eliminating the need to specify a separate bill for each minor option your company offers on an individual product.

Bill of material view

BOM's View function allows you to easily display the bill of material for any specified item. There is an option to “blow through“ phantom items, showing components that are either stocked or controlled, with the first level displaying components normally stocked. You can also optionally display obsolete or forecasted items, along with the Reference Designators.

Costed bill of material

This report allows you to print a costed bill of material for any range of parent items you select. You also have the option to choose whether or not to update the item cost in the location. This update option only appears when the inventory cost method is last, standard, or average.

Gross requirements report

BOM provides the ability to analyze how future orders for parent items will impact inventory levels. Select a quantity of a parent item or items and print a report showing component requirements at all levels. At the same time, the report displays inventory status information to compare component requirements to what is currently available and on order.

Summarized bill of material

The Summarized Bill of Material details all the components of a specified parent. It is called ”summarized“ because each component is shown only once, regardless of level, summarized by quantity-required (per this parent). This summary detail drills down to the lowest level that the component appears in the parent's structure. This is the classical parts list where each part is listed once along with the total quantity required to make one parent. One, a few, or all parent items may be selected to print on this report. You also have an option to print only purchased items or a summary to limit the level of components.