Point 2: Reduce operational issues of linkage between engineering and manufacturing

Many manufacturers are creating and operating multiple BOMs for their products and manufacturing. However, we have often heard that there are operational issues in some cases.
The following chart is a case of common operational issues between engineering and manufacturing that we experienced in our past projects. One of the major causes of such operational issues is an individual BOM management by business application. Especially in some manufacturing companies, E-BOM and M-BOM are individually operated for the purpose of improving the efficiency of individual departmental operations with various tools such as CAD and PDM in engineering department and ERP in manufacturing department. Therefore, the linkage between engineering and manufacturing cannot be done accurately and effectively. As a result, information between engineering and manufacturing gets ruptured that may also cause inconsistencies in the process of engineering and manufacturing department.

As a solution of common operational issues between engineering and manufacturing, we would like to provide the Integrated BOM management solution as described in this column. In order to resolve these issues, these BOMs by business application should be managed by the function and scope of work (role). In addition, the information (i.e., drawing, BOM, parts) and relation between upstream process should be maintained and managed. In this manner, you can establish a link (digital thread), and execute integrated operation such as tracing specific parts or reflecting technical changes by a specific condition such as part number etc.

By reconsidering the BOM management with this method, we think that the business quality and speed of the reflecting technical changes from E-BOM to M-BOM will be improved. In addition, this would also be effective to meet the requirements of current business demands or market changes such as shortening of product life cycle, increase in product variations and globalization of manufacturing.