OpenBOM Distributed Catalog Systems and Network PLM Paradigm

Manufacturing is transforming and it creates a new type of relationships between companies. About 70% of every product these days is development, fabricated or assembled outside of the company (OEM). Contract manufacturing, suppliers, design contractors, partnerships, joint ventures, outsourced projects… you name it.

One of the main challenges is how to organize their work and communication in the most efficient way. Traditional PLM and other software were developed with the paradigm of “central database” in mind. It was helpful and useful to organize the data in the company. However, when companies need to coordinate and communicate, this type of software is not very useful. As a result, most of the companies are ending up by exporting data in Excels or similar formats and sending it via email.

Modern cloud software can provide an advantage to solve this problem. SaaS (cloud) software is always available online, globally accessed and can provide a single point of truth for everyone in a company regardless of their location and function.

You can say, but what if I will host my existing PLM (or other business software) using cloud IaaS infrastructure or just my company data center? It will probably solve one problem- global access and maybe IT cost. However, it won’t solve the problem of communication between companies and users in a distributed manufacturing environment — contractors, suppliers, standard parts providers. The data transfer and communication will be still the same and companies will have multiple databases hosted in the cloud that requires communication using Excel spreadsheets or special integrations.

OpenBOM gives you a better way to work. OpenBOM multi-tenant platform allows multiple companies and users to work independently in an isolated secured environment and, at the same time, to share data in a controlled and coordinated way, so everyone will be able to get access to their data.

This sounds like a very general concept. Today, I want to talk about one specific aspect of OpenBOM technologies — distributed catalog system.

Before jumping into the details, I want to remind you of a few core concepts. OpenBOM supports reference-instance model to manage data about products. These model allows you to create a central data record for items (standards, engineered, etc.) and use them to create multiple Bill of Materials. It is implemented as a system of catalogs and BOMs in OpenBOM. Check these articles.

OpenBOM Reference-Instance Model

All you need to know about OpenBOM catalogs

Think about a distributed model in which companies and part providers are connected together using a network of data. These data exist in OpenBOM as a combination of Bill of Materials and Catalogs in such a way that only data that needs to be shared is available.

On a high level, it looks like the following picture.

However, if look deeper in the relationships between BOMs and Catalogs, you can see that OpenBOM gives you granular access to Bill of Materials (instance data) and Catalogs (reference information).

The idea of OpenBOM catalogs is described in the following picture.

However, the magic happens is when different companies and users are owning multiple catalogs and Bill of Materials. In such a way you can think about companies creating Bill of Materials of their products by using multiple catalogs shared by their partners, contractors, and suppliers. These catalogs can provide a piece of essential information about parts (eg. cost, lead time, manufacturing certification). At the same time, the Bill of Materials holds information about the specific product developed by OEMs. The data consumed online and used for calculations product baseline assessment, production, purchasing. Changes in catalogs are automatically reflected in BOMs.

Wait a minute, you can ask? What will happen in contractor change a price? Or to increase a lead time? Will be it automatically reflected in a BOM? This is a valid point. In some situations, you don’t want it to happen. To support such scenarios and protect Bill of Materials from such impact, OpenBOM revision mechanism is in place to help. When you create a revision of a BOM, the information about historical values of data in the catalog is preserved in a revision baseline.

Conclusion

OpenBOM multi-tenant online system provides real-time access to information shared by open catalogs of standard parts, design contracts, suppliers and allowing to OEMs to create products using the data from these catalogs. By doing so, OpenBOM streamlines the product development process and allows manufacturing companies to get access to a single source of truth for information about products and services provided by multiple companies.

OpenBOM platform and technology open a new way for companies to work together helping to move into of future of Network PLM Paradigm.

Want to learn more about how OpenBOM can help your company? Register for OpenBOM FREE user subscription and contact us for more information.

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.