An Integrated Multi-BOM System for Product Data Management

Bill of material (BOM), which structurally represents the relation among parts constructing a product, is usually created when enterprises start to develop a new product. And it is shown as various types of BOM according to business needs and usage such as eBOM (engineering BOM), gBOM (green BOM), mBOM (manufacturing BOM), pBOM (process BOM), etc. eBOM, generally called BOM and created in the design stage of the new product, includes the drawing information of parts in the view of product function. eBOM is extended to gBOM adding the material information of parts to cope with international regulations for environment. eBOM is transformed to mBOM, which includes manufacturing sequence of parts and adds some parts required to fabricate parts and to assemble the product. mBOM is also extended to pBOM adding the process information of each part and additional assembly processes. This study introduces the concept of multi-BOM covering eBOM, gBOM, mBOM and pBOM, and proposes an advanced way to manage product data using multi-BOM system. The multi-BOM system proposed is to manage their relations using transformation function of BOM and master information of all BOMs.