Comments on: Bill of Materials for Dummies – ETO

By: Ben Hagler

Ben Hagler — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:54:29 +0000

WOW!!!
Great Article.
This is all new to me but … I need to get up to speed.

I have a small ETO company. Over the last few years we have gone from one engineer (me) to five. All our designs are in SolidWorks. Many times we work out what we are selling in the 3D model. Believe it our not.. we have NO item master. We simple grew to fast over 5 years. We therefore do not have any BOM’s We have not been using a PLM or PDM. We simple make stuff and hope we can service it after it ships.

To correct this crazyness. We have purchased Microsoft AX and PTC’s Windchill. PTC .. is providing a new standard off the self intergration … two way.

We are currently in the process trying to define all our design, and manufacturing from scratch. This is really tough becasue we need to define everything item number, descriptions of items numbers, and the crazy complicated world of manageing 3D models, configurations, file names, drawiing numbers eBOM to mBOM to BOM’s once the product is in the fielld becasue overtime it will change.. ie the CAT engine is replaced with a Cummins engine … all must be tracked.

I need advice..

Thanks for your comment Ben,

it seems like you have all challenges ahead. I will contact you by mail to see if I can give you a quick guidance in the right direction.

Best regards Jos

By: vishwanathn

vishwanathn — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:07:30 +0000

Jos,

Nice article. Great thought process. I would like to add Cost and Quality perspective early in the cycle for ETO. Even though they could be part of project management – this is a potential area of focus for most ETO organizations. Configurations and cost and quality per configurations will pose the challenges for these companies.

Your thoughts?

Regards,
-Vishy

Thanks Vishy – and you are right – while my focus was trying to stay with the basics around BOM, cost and quality management are important drivers, sometimes as you said handled in the context of project management. A best practice that I have seen (and promote) is the usage of functional classifcation and issue management integrated in PLM. Functional classification allows you to store and review information about solutions (technologies, functions) you have done before and when you integrate this with issue management you have a good overview of what to do and what to expect. A learning organisation reducing risk and therefore have a positvie improvent towards qualtiy and cost. It could be a separate post …….

Best regards

Jos Voskuiil

By: Prashant Dhonde

Prashant Dhonde — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:47:22 +0000

Great post Jos

By: Oleg Shilovitsky

Oleg Shilovitsky — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:21:55 +0000

Guys, I have one question – for how long, you think, systems and people around will try to do decide WHO owns Bill of Material? Maybe I’m dreaming, but I think, we need to find a way to use one (or synchronized) Bill of Material –> http://plmtwine.com/2009/10/14/seven-rules-towards-single-bill-of-material/. So, the question of “who owns” should be taken out of table. What do you think? Best, Oleg

Oleg thanks for your question.

I believe the discussion is not about who OWNS the Bill of Material, but who adds information at which stage of the product development cycle. The fact that we can represent the product in different views does not mean ownership – it is more ease of use.

BTW the discussion will be on-going – see linked-in ‘s discussion: http://tinyurl.com/ye6hbjq

Best Regards

Jos

By: Yohan Lee

Yohan Lee — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:56:45 +0000

Jos, enjoyed the post greatly. My personal experiences in implementing PLM always involve a philosophical discussion on whether the Manufacturing BOM belongs in PLM or in ERP/MRP. I always arrive on the conclusion of “it depends”. For companies that do both design and manufacturing and want to closely manage the pricing/cost history of their products, a completed mBOM may be required in PLM. What are your thoughts?

Yohan thanks for your reply. I agree with your statement that having the pricing and costs in PLM makes sense for products that you reuse.

In one of my upcoming posts, I will describe the Build To Order process, where this is essential. It gives you much more security and accuracy in the bidding phase.

In the current ETO model I described the idea is that this type of companies design unique products based on their knowledge not on existing products

Best Regards

Jos

By: Jovan (Yannis)

Jovan (Yannis) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:51:02 +0000

Hey Jos, this is a great post. For complex products I see several challenges:
- The configurator becomes mandatory if you want to maximize the reuse of the functions (a bit more efficient than classification). It might help as well to quickly select Features and Accessories.
- The problem is how to track the effect on F&A changes on the EBOM if the configurator is used only by sales engineering people? How to track project changes. From the knowledge I have there is no integrated approach (either process or tool) to manage that efficiently.
- You need a full traceability of the BOM to the customer requirements which is very hard to attain manually given the number of parts in those products.

The problem we are facing as well in ETO processes, is the management of P&ID. It’s the logical diagram of your product / sub system. It is basically the same for the product (think about elevators for instance, they all have the same logical definition), but the end product is very different from one order to another. Logical diagrams (many ins, many outs) are not managed well by PLM tools today because they have a hierarchical approach (one in, many outs)…

ETO is very fascinating because in a world where everything is customized, it becomes a new way to think products.

Yannis hi, thanks for your extensive comment with a lot of points for further discussion. Regarding reuse of functions, I believe this is a part of classification, as the implementation of functions can be customer specific. Function reuse is for me knowledge reuse, where the implementation is not always predictable. The advantage is that you know you have done something similar before.

Regarding the connection between sales and engineering, I believe here more advanced requirements management, like implemented with systems engineering is a solution, but special in the mechanical industry (F&A as you call it) the overhead of systems engineering is not yet proven.

To conclude, you gave me enough to write about in the future. Thanks for that and look at Built To Order, where customer specific engineering and standardization are combined

Best regards

Jos

By: Oleg Shilovitsky

Oleg Shilovitsky — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:04:02 +0000

Jos, Love it!… I think we need to have more such posts, since people perceive PLM a complex and unclear discipline. I hope you had chance to see this in the past – PLM Action Plan For Dummies (http://plmtwine.com/2009/05/21/plm-action-plan-for-dummies/). Best, Oleg

Thanks Oleg, I fully agree with your comments – PLM is not complex – and regarding your post I agree – you can see my comments below the post there