All manufacturing and engineering processes require a bill of materials (BoM), whether it’s manufacture, maintenance, or design. An electronic engineering bill of materials lists all the materials and components used to construct, for example, a printed circuit board.
In a small facility, where the entire project is handled by one or two people, BoM management is quite straightforward. However, where a team or separate companies are involved, things can get complex. The most straightforward scenario begins with a design technician using CAD drafting software (such as Orcad) to create a PCB design. This will include a bill of materials showing what components are needed, and in what amounts. This is then passed on to a PCB layout engineer, who will source the components needed (perhaps using obsolescence management tools to check the components) and construct the printed circuit board.
In busy companies where multiple orders are the norm, BoMs are sent from the Orcad PCB design engineers to purchasing departments, who aggregate the BoMs from all current projects into a single bill of materials, which is then sent to the relevant suppliers. To maintain accuracy and avoid obsolescence problems, BoM scrubbing should be a part of this.
Also called BoM cleansing, BoM scrubbing involves validation or correction of 3 key components for each item ordered: part number, component description, and name of manufacturer. These are compared to content on a central database, ensuring the details match up. An essential element of master data management, BoM cleansing is just one of the high value engineering services we at Enventure Technologies offer to our clients.
