openBoM — the ultimate replacement for Bill of Materials (BOM) spreadsheets

Everyone likes using spreadsheets. Many years ago I wrote a blog — Why do you I like PLM spreadsheets. That’s because spreadsheets are…

1. Simple to use. They don’t require any training to use.
2. Flexible. There are no complicated data models involved.
3. Able to absorb any data. They are data agnostic and vendor independent.
4. Easy to distinguish ownership. You can “physically” own and control it.
5. Transferable. You can share spreadsheets with others.

Because of that, getting started with a BOM spreadsheets is easy. However, as time is passing, the number and complexity of your spreadsheets grows. Another blog I published many years ago — Spreadsheet: From odes to woes. As spreadsheet complexity grows, you’ll require a Chief Excel Officer to manage (and understand) your BOM spreadsheets.

During the early days of openBoM development, we talked to many hardware teams and confirmed that Excel is king; everyone starts using it for almost everything, especially for BOMs. We observed there are two common trends with hardware teams and manufacturing companies:

1. Distributed work and projects; and
2. Demand for real time communication and collaboration “to stay on the same page.”

The second of these trends explained the demand we observed people had for using Google Sheets for collaboration. And here’s the thing, openBoM combines the strengths of Google Sheets’ real time collaboration with superior features to help you to manage BOMs. These include adding integration with engineering tools (CADs), creating and managing BOM revisions, viewing history of changes to a BOM and generating change reports between revisions, organizing inventories and much more.

Have a look at the following video which gives you a ten minute introduction of what openBOM does.

The most important take-away I’d like for you to have after watching the video is openBoM provides you the means to collaborate in real time with your colleagues inside and outside your organization. There are no borders. openBOM is buttressed with unique multi-tenant data management technologies that allow you to manage data in a granular way.

Here are a few things about openBoM I’d like to point out from the video:

1. Data Integration. You can import BOMs from most CAD systems. I include a pic from Autodesk Fusion 360 and from Onshape. Excel spreadsheet import is also available.

2. Structured queries. openBoM provides granular data management capabilities that identify relationships among BOMs. These include “Where used” a “Composed of” queries.

3. Flexible customization of properties. You can create and customize your BOM with different types of BOM properties. These include Text, Number, List, Reference, and Image property types.

4. Create and manage revisions, view history of changes, and generate change reports. You can track the progress of your BOM and ensure it reflects all steps along the way.

5. Inventory and Part Number management. openBoM gives you the ability to create and manage item tables and inventories. Within a BOM, you can assign inventories based on locations of your office and classification of component types.

6. Real time collaboration. You can share and collaboration on a BOM in real time. Edits are instantaneous. Everyone is literally on the ‘same page’. Combined with the revision and history features, tracking changes throughout the process helps avoid mistakes and misunderstanding.

To sum up. openBoM provides unique technologies that make using openBoM as simple as using spreadsheets whilst providing advanced data management tools such as data entry (e.g. integration with CAD, mCAD, eECAD, etc), BOM management and tracking tools, and real time collaboration. In short, openBoM is the ultimate replacement for BOM spreadsheets.

Give openBoM a try today. It’s Free for personal use.

Best, Oleg @openbom.com