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Bills of Materials

A Bill of Materials (BOM) is the reusable recipe for making a product: the steps to follow, the materials each step consumes, the labour tasks, the equipment needed, and what comes out the other end. Set it up once; every work order created from it inherits the whole plan, scaled to the run quantity.

Building a BOM

A BOM is a list of steps in order. Click Add Step, give it a name and instructions (these appear to the operator during production), then add what the step needs:

  • Tasks (Add Task): the labour, as a task product with a quantity (typically hours), and optionally the employee taxonomies qualified to perform it
  • Equipment (Add Equipment): assets or machines the step uses, with quantities
  • Products (Add Product): the materials consumed, with required quantities
  • Dynamic Products (Add Dynamic Product): materials defined by taxonomy rather than as a fixed product, resolved when each work order runs. For example, “one 2L tin of paint, colour chosen per job”
  • By-products (Add By-product): secondary outputs the step produces

Each item shows its cost, quantity and mode in the step table, so you can see the expected cost of the recipe build up as you go.

Fixed vs variable quantities

Every task, equipment and material line has a mode:

  • Variable: scales with the work order quantity. Making 50 units needs 50× the material of making one.
  • Fixed: the same regardless of quantity. One machine setup, one batch of cleaning, one test run.

Getting modes right is what makes per-unit costing accurate across different batch sizes.

Outputs

The BOM’s outputs define what the recipe produces: the product(s), expected quantity per recipe-unit, and unit of measure. When a work order completes, produced quantities are received into stock against these outputs.

Using a BOM

  • Work order setup: choose Select from BOM when setting up a work order; the steps, materials and outputs are copied in and variable quantities scale by the run quantity. See Setting Up a Work Order.
  • Material sourcing: when a work order material is itself something you make, sourcing can create a child work order from the component’s BOM. See Sourcing Materials.

Changing a BOM affects future work orders created from it; work orders already set up keep the copy they took.

Tuning a BOM from real production

A BOM is only as good as its quantities. The Actuals Review section on the BOM compares each quantity with what the most recent completed or closed work orders made from this BOM actually used, so you can correct the recipe from evidence rather than guesswork. Expand it to load the last five work orders.

Reading the review

The summary shows how many lines are outside tolerance, how many one-off spikes were found (and on which work orders), labour per batch on the BOM against actual, and output yield (produced against planned).

The table lists every task, material and by-product, step by step, with:

  • the BOM quantity
  • the actual quantity on each work order, newest first
  • the typical value (the median across the work orders)
  • how far the typical value is from the BOM, and a spread showing every work order against your tolerance band
  • a suggestion

Actuals are shown per BOM batch by default: what the work order used divided by the batches it actually produced. A short run therefore shows up as higher usage per unit rather than hiding it. Switch to Work order totals to see the raw quantities. Fixed quantities are compared per work order.

Cells are coloured when a work order used more or used less than the BOM, and marked as a spike when it’s far from the other work orders. A spike usually means something went wrong on that one job, not that the BOM is wrong. Click a line for a chart of each work order’s usage and a plain-language summary, with buttons to open the spiking work order or leave it out.

Adjusting the BOM

  • Set the Tolerance (within 2%, 5%, 10% or 20%) for how close is close enough.
  • Click a work order’s chip at the top to leave it out of the review, for example a run you know was unusual. The typical values and suggestions recalculate without it.
  • Where a line’s typical usage is outside tolerance, the Suggestion column offers the typical value; click it to write that value into the BOM. Undo puts the original back, and Undo all reverses every change made from the review.

Once the review is loaded, each quantity in the step tables also shows a small chip with its actual usage; click it to jump to that line in the review.

Using a suggestion only changes the BOM you have open. Save the BOM to keep the new quantities.