How to keep engineering and production on the same page using openBoM
Manufacturing requires absolute teamwork. A single person can in practice create a software app and ship it to customers. Actually, it happens all the time, think of iOS apps and Google extensions. However, manufacturing is different. Many disciplines need to come and work together: design, mechanical, electrical, production planning, assembly, purchasing and so on. Ben Einstein of Bolt explained it in his blog, The Complete Guide to Building Hardware Startup Teams: Part 2 (Contributors + Product).
How do you make things work together? Learning from many hardware teams and manufacturing firms, we found that Bill of Materials are the lifeblood of the product development process connecting everyone in the team together. Let me bring a simple scenario I learned from one of our users. Engineers work on the design of a product using a particular CAD system (e.g. SOLIDWORKS). When these engineers make it to a certain stage, they want to create a BOM and send it to the production department for planning. Parts will be ordered based on the part list and product order of how it will be assembled.
The next order, however, comes with a slightly different custom configuration of the product. The request will be sent to engineers to alter the CAD design (maybe an assembly, maybe some additional features will be added). A new BOM (with changes) will be produced and shared with production planning. However, sending changes (which deviate from the previous BOM) to production planning isn’t a trivial job. Purchasing software uses the previous BOM and requires changes to be sent from a standard product BOM. This process is usually painful with high risks of mistakes occurring between engineering and production. Ouch.
Here is a scenario of how openBOM helps you simplify the aforementioned process and keeps the team on the same Bill of Materials:
1. Create a BOM from a SOLIDWORKS CAD design using openBoM as soon as the design is ready. You can generate a part list with all the components that need to be ordered.
2. Share the BOM with a production person using your email account in openBoM. Note, if you use the Team subscription, BOM(s) will automatically be shared with everyone on the team. A BOM can be viewed and changes can be tracked. Revision of the BOM are created as a snapshot of what was released as a “standard product BOM”. Parts are ordered; job done!
3. Now, let’s take this scenario one step further and alter the standard configuration of the design by adding some additional features, for example, replacing a part and adding new electronic component. Finish up the design and make sure to save it.
4. Once again, extract a BOM from SOLIDWORKS using openBoM. The design changes are automatically reflected in the BOM we created in (1.). You can these changes in the BOM and as well as track changes made by team members as a history of changes. You can iterate changes multiple times. openBOm will track all changes.
5. When finally done, create an openBoM revision for the customized product. openBoM gives you the ability to create a report of changes between the standard product BOM (previous revision) and the customize product (final revision).
Conclusion. openBoM makes your life much easier by keeping engineers, production planners, and the people responsible for purchasing on the same page. It tracks all changes, syncs data from CAD design, and keeps revisions of a BOM. Let me know how you perform this process in your company. And reach out to me for a demo of openBoM and questions you may have. Always appreciate hearing from you.
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.
