BOM management: what type of decisions do you need to make?
It is a long weekend Labor Day weekend in the U.S. So, it’s a great opportunity to think about the future of manufacturing. If you missed one of my articles last week, you can catch up by reading Next manufacturing innovation is all about data and networks.
Data is the new oil. The new manufacturing paradigm relies on the ability of a new class of engineering and manufacturing software to translate data into business advantage. openBOM is the first real-time collaboration network data management system for engineers, manufacturing, and supply chain. I was reading an autonews article over the weekend, here. The article offered a few interesting data points and conclusion. My favorite one is the following:
Industry consolidation has also exacerbated the problem. When component suppliers merge, a bill of materials that had multiple sources for each part may suddenly have one source for many of the parts. Fewer suppliers also drives slower capacity increases since there is less competitive pressure to increase capacity.
So what must supply chain professionals at automotive manufacturers do to decrease the risk of disruption?
First, talk with your engineering team. At Firstronic, we are regularly seeing bills of materials with obsolete parts or parts near end of life. Follow the advice contract manufacturers, distributors and component suppliers give on best availability when it comes to parts selection. Pick parts that are easy to cross-reference among multiple manufacturers.
Second, go back to building relationships with your component suppliers and provide information on new programs as early as possible.
Third, stop single-sourcing passive components. We often see only one supplier selected for most of the parts on most designs. There is more than one good automotive supplier on most every passive application. Specify multiple suppliers for each part.
The article discusses mechanisms to automate passive components orders. Some of the decisions are automated, but some of them are not.
Now think about the future of production planning and decision support. Soon, things are going to be more intelligent and we will see more tools for manufacturing planning and decision support. In my opinion, we’ll see it arrive in the context of selecting suppliers, components, validating Bill of Materials and design, and manufacturing planning optimization. Fascinating times await us.
Conclusion. We can easily imagine future BOM management systems spanning across manufacturing company boundaries providing decision support based intelligence and machine learning. It will happen as a result of the massive amount of data analytics and information extracted from engineering and manufacturing systems across the world. Our vision for openBoM is to help user this future in and make it available to everyone in the manufacturing value chain. What do you think? What could this mean to you and your company?
Best, Oleg
PS. 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.
