Browse: Home / , / BOM management strategies: Four recommendations for better Excel BOMs

BOM management strategies: Four recommendations for better Excel BOMs

Posted by  Jennifer Bomze on  Jul 23, 2010 in Arena, BOM Management

entry-comments-link

We recently posted a new article on our website that has a number of useful suggestions for companies that use Excel to manage their bills of materials (BOMs). Following these recommendations will set you up for a faster, smoother and cleaner transition when you’re ready to move to an automated BOM management system (yes, full disclosure, like Arena), but they’ll also help you NOW—and for as long as you continue to use Excel for BOM management.

Four recommendations for better Excel BOMs

  1. Be consistent. Use the same columns in the same order in every Excel bill of materials. Use a standard format for part numbers, manufacturer names, file titles and other types of data.
  2. Use standard templates. Get in the habit of hiding (not deleting) columns that aren’t needed in a particular BOM and creating separate spreadsheets for doing analyses that require additional columns. Give each column a single purpose, and label every piece of data in your Excel BOM spreadsheet.
  3. Have part numbering and part naming conventions – and a single location to store them. Develop and document a standard way to number and name ALL parts, and then manage those part numbers and names in a single location, like an item master or master parts list.
  4. Minimize repeated data. Include only as much data as is needed for each BOM to perform its core function of capturing the relationships between parts and assemblies. Store additional part data in the item master instead of multiple Excel BOMs, so updates only need to be made in one place.

Following these suggestions will help reduce confusion, duplication and errors in your Excel spreadsheet BOMs. For more details, read the full article and be sure to look for the template downloads – you’ll find several Excel BOM templates and examples that can be adapted for your organization’s use.

For more information

Using Excel for Bill of Materials Management

Share clean snapshots of your BOM with PDXViewer

Arena Dispatches: The Excel Series

Part Numbering Schemes—Intelligent vs. Non-Intelligent

  • Don

    I certainly wish that I had had this information and the tools (sample spreadsheets on the links that were included) a few years ago. It would have been great, both as a self preservation tool for the company, and as a great tool to prepare them for a real document control system.

    Congratulations on making these tools available.

    Don
    The Document Control Guy

  • Pingback: PLM, BOM, Excel – How To Make It Right?

  • Pingback: PLM, BOM, Excel – How To Make It Right? « Daily PLM Think Tank Blog

  • http://www.vuuch.com Vuuch

    Excel is the most common Product and Project management solution in use today! The biggest value of Excel is the simplicity of a list. BUT while the list is simple the problem of Excel is keeping everyone aware and everything up to date. Excel provides no way to synchronize… The problem with traditional Enterprise solutions is they over complicate what the users need to do. By embracing the list and providing better control of awareness and synchronization a solution has a great opportunity to improve productivity.

    I see great opportunity to connect a solution like Vuuch to solutions like Arena. Check out the Vuuch Excel import feature that allows you to quickly import your Project Excel file into Vuuch and improve how the team manages their Excel project list http://blog.vuuch.com/?p=721. Using the Vuuch open API teams will be able to connect the two worlds of Project Management and BOM Management. By Vuuch enabling your BOM solution you make the entire process of managing work and the BOM more social and people centric.

  • Anjalikriss

    the attatchments was gud for the beginnerrs.
    which helped me a lot
    thank u

  • Pingback: The best of the Arena blog—2011