A Bill of Materials (BOM) is a comprehensive list of all materials, parts, components, and even consumables required to produce a finished product.
The responsibility for maintaining an accurate BOM throughout a product's lifecycle typically falls to the product development, design, or engineering teams within a company.
For example, here are a few common items found in a standard Bill of Materials:
- Input Materials: For an automotive component manufacturer, this could be steel. For a confectionery maker, it might include ingredients like flour, cocoa, and sugar.
- Spare Parts: For a smartphone manufacturer, spare parts could include buttons or keypads.
- Consumables: This includes materials like grease, oil, glue, and wire, which are used during the manufacturing process.
Types of BOM Inventory Management Software
Managing a Bill of Materials (BOM) within an Inventory Management System typically means two different things, depending on whether you are the manufacturer or the consumer.
1. As the Consumer – In this case, you are the recipient of the product for which the BOM is created. Large companies with extensive production operations across multiple regions manage numerous fixed and movable assets, each having its own BOM and maintenance schedules.
BOM management software, in this scenario, integrates the BOM with the inventory management system and supports an overall MRO inventory management strategy.
2. As the Manufacturer – In this instance, you are the producer of the product for which the BOM is issued. You need to update inventory levels of raw materials, consumables, spare parts, and other resources required to manufacture the product.
Equipment [Asset] BOMs & Inventory Management
Similar to case 1 above, analyzing BOMs, extracting crucial data, and mapping it across source systems is essential for Asset Management and MRO teams.
The data captured through the BOM, particularly the equipment and spare part information, is then integrated into an ERP system, typically into one of the following modules.
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MRO Spare Parts Master – This typically resides in the ERP system and serves as a comprehensive database of all spare parts across various facilities.
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An Asset Master – Also stored in the ERP system, this is a database that includes all fixed assets across different facilities.
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Digital Record of Equipment BOM – Maintenance and asset management teams keep a digital record of asset BOMs in the ERP system.
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Digital Record of Work Orders – Similarly, MRO teams maintain an up-to-date digital record of all work orders for each piece of equipment, allowing them to track the historical context of maintenance schedules.
For companies operating in asset-intensive industries with large-scale production or manufacturing, ensuring smooth maintenance operations is crucial for achieving operational efficiency.
To achieve this, it's essential to manage spare parts data, track inventory levels, and understand their dependencies across the organization’s fixed assets in real-time.
Extracting Data from Equipment BOM
A key feature of BOM and inventory management software is its ability to extract data from a Bill of Materials document, including:
1. Spare parts needed for the maintenance or repair of a specific product, along with important details such as Manufacturer Name or Manufacturer Part Number.
2. Equipment or fixed asset details, including equipment category, asset number, and more.
3. Consumables necessary for the Flowkeep of the equipment.
Thanks to cutting-edge AI technologies and agent-based frameworks, it is now possible to extract valuable data from unstructured documents.
This capability allows organizations to identify the spare parts needed for MRO throughout the entire lifecycle of equipment.
The video below demonstrates how structured data can be extracted from a Bill of Materials document—or any other technical document.
The next step is to create these SKUs in the MRO master.
An MRO master is essentially a dataset that holds all the spare parts necessary for equipment maintenance.
After extracting the spare part details for each piece of equipment, two scenarios can occur:
1. Spare Part Exists in the MRO Master – In this case, the inventory management system will recognize that the spare part already exists in the MRO master. The part record and the asset record will then be updated in both the MRO master and the equipment master to establish the dependency between the two.
2. Spare Part Doesn’t Exist in the MRO Master – In this case, a new MRO data record will be created and submitted for approval. During this process, the dependent equipment will be linked to the spare part.
This information is stored in the MRO master or asset master, which serves as a bridge between the inventory management system and the bill of materials data.
The MRO master can now be cross-referenced with the inventory management system in any ERP, providing a clear view of the available spare parts for each piece of equipment.
Just a few years ago, managing this data across BOMs and inventory systems was nearly impossible, as BOM documents from various suppliers were often unstructured and disorganized.
However, with the rise of AI-driven technologies, software systems have become "context-aware," allowing them to extract structured data from unstructured sources and integrate it seamlessly with other systems.
Conclusion
Efficiently managing BOM data and spare parts inventory is essential for enterprise asset management.
With the advent of advanced agentic systems, this information can now be "comprehended" and seamlessly synchronized across various systems.
