Comments on: When BOM seeks the right enterprise nanny…

By: olegshilovitsky

olegshilovitsky — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 13:15:48 +0000

Chris, I agree, the single point of truth worked bad in the past 10-15 years of PDM/PLM software experience. DW was a try of big vendors like MS/Oracle/SAP etc. to produce a notable result. However, it appears as a very expensive. Mashups are cool… I think there is an opportunity to use web technologies (some of them developed as part of Web 2.0) to produce a better solution. In the end World Wide Web is the most decentralized system, and it is one that works (!). Best, Oleg

By: Vuuch

Vuuch — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:36:37 +0000

Josh you are right, there are too many single and complete versions of truth. Over the last 40 years or so the software guys have tried to be this single version grabing what they can and locking it down. Well we know this has not worked by the amount of Excel files floating around. The centralized approach is good only for the software provider and heads of goverment.

The truth is real decentralized. Imagine a BOM mashup… Imagine of your product data tools supported a decentralized mashable approach. WOW this would certainly map to reality…

And what if you could take this one step further and define your assembly process this way? Yesterday I spoke with a customer that is doing just that http://blog.vuuch.com/plm/assmebly-instructions-in-excel/2010/08/19. They have assembly steps in excel, 3DVIA Composer and paper and wanted to manage all this in a way that was simple, effective and did not take years and millions. What they came up with was fantastic. Give it a look and a try.

By: olegshilovitsky

olegshilovitsky — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:02:22 +0000

Peter, I think this is great approach. It will make things “related”, but at the same time “independent”. This is what you are saying, by “This approach gets me out of BoM meetings so I can design the next mate and it gives the sales folks the greatest opportunity to be creative”. But, this relationships should be “smart” enough to evolve within time when you will come to design and sell new modification of the same product. Probably “sales” system need to have “smart” connection to ERP and you BoM system (whatever you will use for this). -Thanks, Oleg.

By: Peter Truitt

Peter Truitt — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:11:53 +0000

When I said “My assembly drawing will simply show how each part relates to the rest”, I left out the following: How might the top-level assemblies relate to each other, if my company makes salable items that a customer might mix and match to get what they want? If I have a formal ‘Design Product Specification’ document for each salable assembly that spells out, in the queen’s english, who the approved mates are, I can leave the sales staff and the customers free to use configurators, or sales numbers I ignore, or purchase orders. (I set the rules in the “Design Product Specifications” and then get out of the way.) It might be good/necessary to reference ‘Interface Drawings’ to supplement the queen’s english. This approach gets me out of BoM meetings so I can design the next mate and it gives the sales folks the greatest opportunity to be creative.

By: olegshilovitsky

olegshilovitsky — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:56:40 +0000

Peter, Thanks a lot for your thoughts! I see your point related to the traceability and connectivity of different pieces of Bill of Materials and assembly drawing. Probably traceability of Bill of material related information is even more important compared to data ownership and specific Bill of Materials views you can manage. Regards, Oleg. PS. Thanks for referencing authors/books. will take a look on them.

By: Peter Truitt

Peter Truitt — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:03:10 +0000

As a designer, I never want to tell production how to build something, if at all possible because they will always be at my door since they are/should be improving their processes. Let them have any BoM structure they want. I just want ‘design parts’ to be included in the BoM somewhere. My assembly drawing will simply show how each part relates to the rest. One company might call the shipping carton a ‘design part’ and the next company might not. If the company’s definition of ‘design parts’ must include the carton, I will show the assembly sitting in it. I can leave the BoM off the drawing if I can put the assembly document number and the ‘balloon’ or ‘find’ number next to the part number where it occurs in the BoM. I might need to be able to list a part on the BoM more than once if there is more than one assembly drawing related to the BoM. I could put part numbers on assembly drawings instead of ‘balloon’ numbers, but then if a part number change, I will be required to change the assembly drawing when it might be avoided. Dave Garwood and Frank Watts are good authors speaking to these issues.

By: How we can socialize PLM Bill of Materials? « Daily PLM Think Tank Blog

How we can socialize PLM Bill of Materials? « Daily PLM Think Tank Blog — Wed, 06 May 2009 09:37:53 +0000

[...] lucky? >, I discussed how many different BOMs we can discover in the organization and later , I discussed the various trends in BOM management. I came to the conclusion that the [...]

By: To PLM or Not to PLM – measuring the development phase « Jos Voskuil’s Weblog

Sun, 03 May 2009 22:26:58 +0000

[...] these posts at: vuuch.com and plwtwine.com – they give points to consider, and I support the observation that although we try to do [...]

By: olegshilovitsky

olegshilovitsky — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:38:58 +0000

François, There is big value in data synchronization. People likes silos, since they feel data is available in the way they created it. But it doesn’t mean data need to be siloed… So, process of data/BOM synchronization need to take care of this data. This is related to http://plmtwine.com/2009/04/02/is-it-time-for-a-synchronized-bill-of-materials/. -Oleg.

By: François

François — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:08:38 +0000

Oleg, good question, why it doesn’t work? May be because people like to live into silos (http://plmtwine.com/2009/04/30/how-can-you-prevent-plm-20-silos/)! They trust their data and not the data created by others. They prefer arrange their data as they need, and not simply use a structure which they feel is not convenient for themselves.
Let’s assume there is a central organization in the company, in charge of maintaining the unique “BOM” (A job for life!). Those people need to have a strong rigor maintaining the rules in order to ensure that all users of the master keep satisfied with that. But they need to be aware of any rule change in all downstream departments. Reaching that situation means that all downstream department processes are known and quite do not change. A frozen company! Are we there?

Is collaboration a dream from Marketing and (top level) management?