No matter how simple or complicated, every manufacturing project, whether it’s a unique one-off product or repeat process production, has a Bill of Materials (BOM), which is crucial to effectively organize and communicate the details of your project to others.
Consider the following tips to improve communication, slash costs, and avoid bad design decisions along the journey from the planning stages to production.
Be Very Detailed
Your documentation needs to be so detailed that it will allow every employee who has never read or seen your design files before to recreate products from scratch without hiccups, including quality control specifications. If they find that impossible to do, your documentation is not up to par.
It’s important to review and add in your own specifications in order to make sure you’re as thorough as possible, and your employees make the product consistently and adhere to the design specs.
Avoid Ambiguity in Your BOM
Ideally, you want to communicate flexibility in your BOM, since it’s typically ambiguity that often leads to hoards of wrong parts in the manufacturer’s warehouse, which costs a lot of money.
You need a system that makes communicating what you require with your employees much clearer, and allows you to communicate your design flexibility throughout the prototyping and quotation process. No matter how you choose to do it, accurately communicating your BOM can help avoid sourcing errors and lower production expenses by using the sourcing experience and skill of your purchasing staff.
Document Any Changes
During the phase from prototype to production, and as product improvements are made, the BOM will change. Although this is normal, it’s critical to document any changes, or else your colleagues will get confused along the way. No matter how you choose to do this, just make sure that it’s as detailed as possible, and that every little change has been documented.
A thorough and complete bill of materials is a critically important first step that you need to take towards generating an on-going production-ready design. When it comes to manufacturing, every tiny little oversight will become much more of a problem the longer it is left undetected. All the effort you put into your BOM will save you both money and hassle over the long haul.
To help you get a handle on your BOM, be sure to contact Oneir Solutions Inc. We can help you come up with the right Enterprise Resource Planning (EPR) software solution to run your business smoothly and profitably in the most time-efficient means possible! Visit OneirSolutions.com today!
