Manufacturers today require optimized operations to stay competitive. For many, this means implementing new tools or better leveraging the ones they have for improved communication and collaboration—especially as product variations and numbers grow. Taking a parts-centric approach to the bill of materials (BOM) can supercharge these efforts, and completing BOM management in PLM can drive this even further.

Bill of Materials Overview

What Is BOM?

A bill of materials (BOM), also known as a product structure, is a comprehensive list of the raw materials, assemblies, components, parts, and quantities needed to manufacture a single product. This document is critical in manufacturing and allows partners and teams to communicate more effectively.

Why Does BOM Management Matter?

One of the biggest challenges of BOM management is making sure that the document stays up to date. Ensuring BOM changes are implemented universally is critical to staying on time and on budget with a widely distributed workforce. By implementing a parts-centric approach and using the right tools, it’s possible to:

  • Reduce errors
  • Speed up time to market
  • Increase operational efficiency
  • Lower costs and waste
  • Improve component and part utilization

BOM management in PLM empowers organizations with a single source of truth for products throughout their entire lifecycle.

 

BOM Management in PLM

Windchill product lifecycle management (PLM) from PTC is the essential tool for BOM management. It helps product designers create and manage products using a parts-centric design approach and can be leveraged across the entire product lifecycle. By using PLM, there is a single source of truth for everything related to a product, ensuring that everyone involved uses the correct product information.

Windchill PLM includes advanced BOM management features that support downstream efficiencies.

Windchill BOM Management Features

Windchill comes ready out of the box to support a digital thread strategy, using associative digital content with traceable links to tie everything together.

  • Visualize: Use 3D visualizations to see product configurations. Advanced functionality includes performance interference checking, visual comparison, and color-coded search.
  • Edit: Easily create and manage designs with inline editing features, save-as, import from a spreadsheet, autocomplete search, and build a BOM from a CAD file.
  • Compare: Compare products and variations based on differences in parts, CAD files, documents, and BOM.
  • Create variants: Build and manage configurable product platforms and create 3D deliverables to support design and downstream needs.
  • Manage parts: Easily classify parts, manage replacements and supersedes, and define part types from a single integrated interface.
  • Transform: Transform BOM management in PLM through associative engineering, manufacturing, and services to streamline allocation.

Using an associative model, BOM management in PLM can empower your digital transformation initiatives.

Kickstart Your Digital Transformation with BOM Management in PLM

By implementing BOM management in PLM, organizations have the power to capture, configure, and manage product information throughout the entire product lifecycle. This helps to increase efficiency without compromising quality. In addition, a single source of truth powers collaboration across distributed teams and streamlines processes to improve productivity while reducing costs.

Ready to get started with Windchill for your BOM Management in PLM? Just contact us for a demo.