Creating a New Bill of Materials

To create a new Bill of Material you should

1.  Confirm that the assembly to be produced and all of the component parts for the assembly have been created in the Catalog and Inventory files.  The items to be included in the Bill of Materials must exist in the inventory location in which you will be assembling or producing the item.  If the assembly or any of the components do not exist in the inventory location where the shop floor transactions for the items are to be processed, inventory records should be created for the items in that location before setting up the Bill of Materials.

2.  Select the Bill of Materials Management program from the Shop Floor Menu. 

3.  Check to make sure one or more Bills of Material have not already been defined for the item.  You may search for the BOM for a specific item in the Bill of Materials program by keying in the top level item or a portion of it and pressing the Enter key.  This will cause the program to locate and select the record that most closely matches the value you entered.  You should also note that the Checkboxes and the BOM Type windows displayed in the lower section of the program will cause the program to filter and only display the BOMs that match the specified criteria.

4.  If an existing BOM exists for the item, determine whether you wish to edit the existing Bill of Material or whether you wish to create a new Bill of Material for the item.  You may maintain multiple bills of materials for a single top level item, and each of the bills of material for the item is assigned a unique revision number.  The revision number is used to tie records to the BOM and to determine which BOM revision was used on a particular shop order.  If you need to edit the existing Bill of Materials, please see the instructions for Editing an Existing Bill of Materials in the next section.

5.  Press the Insert Key or Button to create a new Bill of Material.  When the Insert option is selected, the system displays the Catalog Lookup program.  The Catalog Lookup program displays the items that have been set up in the Catalog file (this should include all items in your system regardless of whether they are set up in a specific warehouse), and it allows you to search for and select a specific item number using any of the several different display and search sequences supported by the program.  Once the Catalog Lookup is displayed, you should locate and highlight the top level item to be defined by the Bill of Materials and use the Select Button, Enter Key, or double click the item with the mouse. At this point, the system will display the Bill of Materials Header Detail Panel and it will load the panel with the selected item number.  The Header Detail panel will also assign a default type and status of A to the Bill of Materials Header, and it will automatically assign the next available BOM revision for the top level item to the record (the revision will default to 1 on the first BOM for each item and it is incremented each time an additional BOM is defined for the item.

6.  Enter or edit any other information for the new Bill of Materials Header record as required.  If the Bill of Materials you are defining will be used to produce kits, you should click the Kit BOM field to identify the Bill of Material as the active kit BOM for the item (Please note that only one active kit BOM should be defined for kit BOMs).  You may also edit the BOM type or status as required, add an optional short description for the Bill of Materials, and specify the effective dates and or optional code fields for the BOM.  Once you are done making any required changes, save the record by pressing the Save key or Button.

7.  Add the line items to the new bill of materials.  Once you have saved the Bill of Materials Header for the new BOM, the system will automatically display the Bill of Materials Line Lookup program.  This program displays the component items and quantities that are consumed (or produced in the case of byproducts) when the top level item is assembled.  Once the Bill of Materials Line Lookup is displayed, the Insert option can be used to display the Catalog Lookup program so that the component items can be selected.  As you select each item, and press the Enter key or Select Button, the system activates the Bill of Materials Line Detail Panel and it loads the component item into the panel.  At this point, you should specify the quantity of the component that is required to build one of the top level items in the BOM, and add an optional note to the BOM line.  Once you have set the component quantity and have entered an optional note, you may save the new Bill of Materials Line using the Save option.  You should repeat this step for each component in the Bill of Material.  Components that are consumed to build the top level item should have a positive quantity.  Items that are byproducts or that are produced by the assembly process and put into stock at the end of the process should have a negative quantity.  As each component is added to the Bill of Materials, the total cost of the components in the BOM is updated and displayed in the lower section of the Bill of Materials Line Lookup program.  The current average cost of the top level item (from inventory) is also displayed next to the component cost – for comparative purposes.

8.  Add optional Bill of Materials Comments as described in a later section of this document.

More:

Edit Existing Bill of Materials