A bill of materials (BOM) is a collection of raw materials, sub-assemblies or parts, that all come together to create a final product. Where a manufactured item is changing its bill of materials, the business can use BOM ‘versions’ to capture the changes. The production order then uses the correct BOM, dependant on the BOM version start date, and based on the production order due date.
In the majority of cases, the relevant valid BOM version will be selected for the production order. As a bill of materials specification will generally only improve over time, the most up-to-date version is likely to be the best version. However, there are instances where the customer asks for the item to be built using an old version of the BOM. This may warrant a different subset of components or manufacturing technique. Generally speaking, the customer in this instance will be looking to have their BOM built in the same fashion as their existing stock, assuming this is a returning customer. So let’s take a look at allowing users to choose between BOM variants.
BOM versions
The first task will be getting onto the production BOM page on Business Central. Reaching this can be done by simply typing ‘production BOM’ into the search bar and clicking the option within the ‘Pages and Tasks’ category. Different versions can be created from the Production BOM Card by selecting ‘Related’, then ‘Prod. BOM’ and then ‘Versions’ from the menu.
Traditionally with BOM versions, they’ll work on a predefined date system. For example, when an improved version of the product is created, the start date for this version will be defined. Any date after this point that a BOM is requested, the latest version of that particular BOM will be used.
Let’s take a look at this in practise…
A working example
Continuing on with our theme of the ‘Widget’, let’s establish a system work date of 15/01/21. Next, create a released production order for a Widget with a due date of 27/01/2021. Any Widgets will be defaulted to the ‘2021’ BOM version. Next, click ‘Process’, then ‘Refresh Production Order’ to generate a production order line defining the Production BOM Version Code as ‘2021’.
In order to see what our BOM has been developed from, click onto the relevant line and then click the option ‘Line’ and then ‘Components’. As you can see below, here we get access to the components of BOM version ‘2021’.
To get our production order to use an older BOM version, we can manually adjust the line. In this instance, the ‘2020’ BOM version can be our older version type. We simply adjust the Production BOM Version Code on the line to ‘2020’.
Like before, click ‘Process’, then ‘Refresh the Production Order’ again. However, in this case, un-tick the ‘Lines’ option. This sets the function to use the data on the Production Order Line rather than the Item Card. So, if this is left switched on, the system will ignore the request you have made to use a different BOM version and instead will return to using the default version.
Once we have made sure that we are not using the default BOM version, we can click on ‘Lines’. From here, click ‘Components’ to review the components of the ‘2020’ BOM version.
The Released Production Order can then be processed through as normal.
Hopefully that helps you! If you have any queries, be sure to get in contact with us.