AnsweredAssumed Answered

BOM's.. What's the normal working procedure?

Question asked by Trev Rich on Oct 11, 2010
Latest reply on Oct 14, 2010 by Anna Wood

Like • Show 0 Likes0
Comment • 11

Where I work, our current practise is to right click on the BoM on teh drawing and save as an excel file.

Then we open a template, and copy / paste the files from the previous saved file and link the cells.

Then everytime the drawing is updated, we right click save as excel again.

But it's a broken link, you have to remember to save the table. Whereas if you modify a part, the drawing and everything automatically updates.

I feel that the bom should only be on the drawing, with an extra column being an equation of the amount on order multiplied by the parts quantity.

I am just wondering how other places of work deal with BoMs..

Any advice greatly recieved.

Trev

No one else has this question

Outcomes

11 Replies

Anna Wood Oct 12, 2010 1:13 AM
Mark Correct
Correct Answer
Sounds like you are making way more extra work then needed. Our BOM's are SolidWorks BOM's (not Excel) on sheet 1 of our assembly drawings.

Our manufacturing control people decide how many parts need to be made/ordered if there is more then one assembly required. This type of info is never put on a drawing. That is a function of the ERP/MRP system, not the engineering drawings.

FWIW,

Anna
Like • Show 0 Likes0
Actions
- Trev Rich @ Anna Wood on Oct 12, 2010 3:10 AM
  Mark Correct
  Correct Answer
  Thanks for your reply Anna.
  We never have only one order of an assembly.
  Please can you help me understand.. if you dont put the multiple on sheet one, and you don't transfer the information to excel, then how do they get the multiples?
  Like • Show 0 Likes0
  Actions
  - Anna Wood @ Trev Rich on Oct 12, 2010 3:51 AM
    Mark Correct
    Correct Answer
    I am assuming you are letting SW calculate and show in the BOM qty column the number of items needed for a single assembly. You are referring to an Excel spreadsheet to do the math for when you get an order for say 5 of a particular assembly. Is that a correct assumption?
    
    Our production/manufacturing control people do their own math. They recieve the customer purchase order directly from sales. If the order is for 5 assemblies, they look at our BOM for a single assembly and do the math. Or more appropriately have our ERP/MRP systems do the work when they input the data into the system to create travelers, PO's for purchased components or pull from stock.
    
    Probably 80% of our customer orders are never sent through engineering. We have product that our customers have been ordering and re-ordering for years.
    
    We electronically release pdf's of our assembly/part drawings into our web based document management system. Our production/manufactuing control people access and work from the pdf's to create the production BOM's in our ERP/MRP system.
    
    Are you are using Excel as an ERP/MRP system to tell the shop what to build?
    
    Explain your process in a bit more detail so we understand what you are doing. I am not quite sure I am understanding your process from sales to engineering to production control to the shop floor or warehouse.
    
    Cheers,
    
    Anna
    Like • Show 0 Likes0
    Actions
    - Trev Rich @ Anna Wood on Oct 12, 2010 4:09 AM
      Mark Correct
      Correct Answer
      Thanks Anna.
      Yes the correct assumption I will explain exactly what goes on...
      
      I work in a wire display stand company.
      For bespoke stands we produce a drawing and an excel sheet for production.
      The drawing will display the bom for one assembly.
      We then save the bom as an excel sheet so that none of the information is copied over by hand.
      
      We then take our standard Excel template, copy the information onto it and link the cells.
      The excel sheet has an extra column to work out the multiples.
      
      When the customer orders, production will print out the drawing, and add details to the Excel sheet. (colour / amount / sop date / delivery date etc.)
      
      The drawing and Excel sheet get sent down onto the shop floor together.
      
      Heres our full procedure.. in brief ;-)
      
      Customer requests a prototype of a new stand.
      Design produces dwgs to show customer. Dwgs are saved in a design folder.
      Customer approves dwg. We release to our prototype dept to produce.
      Customer recieves proto, and make ammendments or approve.
      Once approved the files are moved into a production folder.
      Production team leader prints out the dwg, adds info to excel sheet and prints also.
      
      Hope that's enough information.
      thanks again for your help
      Like • Show 0 Likes0
      Actions
      - Anna Wood @ Trev Rich on Oct 12, 2010 5:55 AM
        Mark Correct
        Correct Answer
        So you do not have any kind of ERP/MRP system to handle your inventory, methods of manufacturing (MOM), job travelers, accounting, etc....
        
        Do you use a PDM system?
        
        It appears you have a very flat org chart. Sales, engineering, production leads and production people with maybe a few office folks to handle billing and payroll? How many people work at the company? Does the company have plans to get bigger and more sophisticated in the products it designs and manufactures?
        
        Your system probably works as well as any if you are not utilizing ERP/MRP or PDM systems.
        
        I would say there is no standard or normal procedure for BOM's for any one company. It all depends on the tools, technology and people skills you have in house. You use the tools you have to get the job done.
        
        I suspect there are better ways to do what you do, but there needs to be a willingness to explore new methods. Also a willingness to spend a bit of money on software or custom programming to help automate processes.
        
        Do you suffer from the wrong data/information getting on the shop floor? How much does that cost you in time and money in a year? Is it enough of a hassle to explore new ways of doing things? If it is, you may want to get a consultant in to help explore potential avenues for streamlining your processes. Your systems may work perfectly fine for the size and complexity of your work flow, but it does not hurt to explore different tools that may allow you to get the job done more efficiently.
        
        Also think in terms of where the company wants to go in the future. Do you plan to grow into more types of design and engineering or just stay the course at your current size and type of work you do? If you wish to grow, are your systems and processes robust enough to grow into the company you would like to be?
        
        Lots of ways to look at your engineering work flow to see if it is the most efficient for your company.
        
        Cheers,
        
        Anna
        Like • Show 0 Likes0
        Actions
        Trev Rich @ Anna Wood on Oct 12, 2010 6:12 AM
        Mark Correct
        Correct Answer
        So you do not have any kind of ERP/MRP system to handle your inventory, methods of manufacturing (MOM), job travelers, accounting, etc....
        We have Sage2011 but don't integrate it with solidworks or even know if you can or what use it would be? We are introducing an ERP system soon, so will enquire once underway on how it can benefit Solidworks.
        What are job travellers? I've never heard that term until today?
        
        Do you use a PDM system?
        We don't at present.. I am currently looking at PDM but in all honesty. It looks like it would only be benificial if you have quite a few people working on Solidworks in the company. We only have myself and the head of production who also draws. The fact that we have a guy working in both production and design makes PDM hard to implement in a way that it's supposed to work.
        
        Your system probably works as well as any if you are not utilizing ERP/MRP or PDM systems.
        To be honest the system works very well. I was just wondering how others utilize BoMs as I don't like the "broken link" where the Excel sheet wont automatically update when a part is updated.
        
        I would say there is no standard or normal prodcedure for BOM's for any one company. It all depends on the tools, technology and people skills you have in house. You use the tools you have to get the job done.
        Thanks. Answer I was looking for I guess.
        
        I suspect there are better ways to do what you do, but there needs to be a willingness to explore new methods. Also a willingness to spend a bit of money on software or custom programming to help automate processes.
        Exactly why I have asked the question on here. I am always looking for better ways to get the job done efficiently and reduce mistakes. Hence again teh "broken link" in my system. I think I will have to look at this again once we have an ERP system in place.
        
        Do you suffer from the wrong data/information getting on the shop floor? How much does that cost you in time and money in a year? Is it enough of a hassle to explore new ways of doing things? If it is, you may want to get a consultant in to help explore potential avenues for streamlining your processes. Your systems may work perfectly fine for the size and complexity of your work flow, but it does not hurt to explore different tools that may allow you to get the job done more efficiently.
        We don't suffer too badly from wrong information on the drawings. Mostly small errors missed at the checking stage.
        As I said above, despite being a small co. And despite the system working well, I still constantly look for ways to reduce errors further and try out new tools.
        
        Thank you for all the time you have put into this Anna. Really is appreciated, great asset to this forum.. Thanks
        Like • Show 0 Likes0
        Actions
        Anna Wood @ Trev Rich on Oct 13, 2010 2:45 PM
        Mark Correct
        Correct Answer
        Trev,
        
        Job Travelers are the paperwork that travels with the parts being made. Gives a job/project number to log time against. Shows what material is required, steps for the method of manufacturing (MOM), etc. You probably have the same type of paperwork, but call it something different.
        
        Good luck with your quest..... :-)
        
        Cheers,
        
        Anna
        Like • Show 0 Likes0
        Actions
        Trev Rich @ Anna Wood on Oct 14, 2010 3:28 AM
        Mark Correct
        Correct Answer
        Thanks Anna. You have been most helpful
        One query though.. You say that the Excel Bom is up to production to build. And that they make a PDF by hand?
        Doesn't that open up to mistakes when a BoM generated from the BoM on the drawing would be exact assuming the save as has been performed?
        
        Trev
        Like • Show 0 Likes0
        Actions
        Anna Wood @ Trev Rich on Oct 14, 2010 4:29 AM
        Mark Correct
        Correct Answer
        Trev,
        
        Engineering creates the drawing pdf with a Save As from the drawings in SolidWorks and uploads it into our document management system (DMS). Our production control department prints the pdf's out to go into the job travelers. They then re-type the BOM info into our ERP/MRP system. (This is an area I will automate after we get our new ERP/MRP system implemented by the end of the year.) Within the ERP/MRP system they create and print the job travelers that will go with the paper prints to the shop floor.
        
        We do not use Excel for anything in our release/manufacturing process. We use a software package that my company's software division develops and markets for our document management system. It is called VisualVault. For our ERP/MRP we will be using Epicor 9 when we complete the upgrade from Vista (an older Epicor product). Epicor 9 handles almost every business process in the company from initial contact with a customer, to shipping product, billing, inventory and accounting, etc. Engineering's main tools are SolidWorks and VisualVault. The rest of the company runs on Epicor 9 and VisualVault.
        
        Yes, there is a chance for error when we go from our pdf and re-type info into the ERP/MRP system. However, we have good people and it is pretty rare for them to make mistakes. With that said, we have a big opportunity to gain efficiencies by further automating our engineering/production release process. It is already a pretty efficient, web-based, electronic process, just need to eliminate some double data entry work that we currently do now. There are many reasons we haven't done it yet. With our newly updated ERP/MRP system we will look into getting the programming done to automate the data entry into the ERP/MRP system. I have several projects for automating processes in engineering planned for 2011. Been waiting for the software and also some hardware upgrades to get completed before I start.
        
        I will be working to get code created that reads the file/BOM hierarchy and document properties from SolidWorks files directly and pushes that info into the Microsoft SQL Server database that Epicor 9 and VisualVault runs on. This should allow us to input the info once into our SolidWorks file's custom properties and then just push the data to our other software packages when we do a release.
        
        Cheers,
        
        Anna
        Like • Show 0 Likes0
        Actions
        Jesse Seger @ Anna Wood on Oct 14, 2010 6:46 AM
        Mark Correct
        Correct Answer
        I caught a glimpse of a similar project with Epicor 9. It ended up not needing any programming at all. I was a little bummed because that is what I do, but the process was too simple.
        
        The engineer saves a BOM from a drawing or assembly as a text or csv file to a specific folder. Epicor 9 sees the file and knows exactly what columns in the BOM it needs to create or update item masters.
        
        So the automated part could be the exporting of the BOM from SW or even better yet, PDM.
        Like • Show 0 Likes0
        Actions
        Anna Wood @ Jesse Seger on Oct 14, 2010 10:37 PM
        Mark Correct
        Correct Answer
        Jesse,
        
        Sweet... Thanks for the tip. Will save me a ton of time on deciding on a process.
        
        I do seem to remember our IT guys talking about getting a module that would monitor a folder. I will check with them tomorrow to see if we have that capability.
        
        Probably just a matter of mapping the BOM columns in the txt/csv file to the appropriate data fields in Epicor 9.
        
        Boy, if it is that easy that would be great. Even, if we did that manually to start it would be a huge time saver.
        
        Thanks for the insight,
        
        Anna
        Like • Show 0 Likes0
        Actions

BOM's.. What's the normal working procedure?

Outcomes

Related Content

Recommended Content