natek64 - Thursday, March 8, 2007 2:06 PM:
We have parts that have materials, labor hours, machine hours as part of their BOMs. Under Part, Innovator has Component, Assembly, Material, and Software. Would you use Component? Any suggestions for classifying Machines/tooling, and labor? I'm Looking for suggested best practices for nomenclature...
Thanks,
Nate
RobMcAveney - Thursday, March 8, 2007 3:49 PM:
Nate -
There's no single best practice for how to handle BOMs like this. Companies will sometimes separate the labor hours, machine hours, etc. into a separate manufacturing BOM and leave only components that have actual part numbers in the engineering BOM. Other companies will produce a detailed process plan to track this information, then aggregate the info as required in reports, etc. It sounds like you track more of a combined engineering and manufacturing BOM, which is reasonable in some industries. In this case, I would suggest adding new classifications for Parts to handle labor and machine hours. To do this, edit the Part ItemType and click on the Class Structure button. An editable tree widget will pop up that allows you to add, remove or structure classes as you want them.
Regards -
Rob
natek64 - Thursday, March 8, 2007 5:41 PM:
Hi Rob -
Perhaps I need to think about the concept of Engineering BOM VS. MFG
BOM... I sort of think of an ENGR BOM as containing tangible things
like the part design itself as well as designed or purchased parts to
create the product, such as the mold. But obviously you can't use a
mold without a machine. We currently "manage" our MFG BOMs in or ERP system. Eventually we need to also manage associated recipe and setup procedures integrated or at least with
documents attached.
In addition to CAD product/mold (Mold BOMs) data, all we have so far are MFG BOMs. To begin creating parts in Innovator that match our existing naming conventions, I exported a MFG BOM from our ERP system and added the "parts" into Aras, including Extrusion processes, and Thermoforming processes. Since they are already in our ERP system, I added the part classifications you suggested for labor and machine hours.
For our design process, it would make sense to have a prototype BOM because we
have many many prototypes that never go to production, and then (as you suggested) a combination ENGR/MFG BOM. At minimum, the Prototype BOM(s) would have material spec. and prototype cycle times in it for one or more prototype(s). It is one of our goals that if/when the prototype was approved, it could be "promoted" to MFG BOM and the associated engineering, mold, die, labor and process components added. Integration with Innovator to push that data into our ERP/MRP system would make that process much less manual and prone to error. That would greatly help our manufacturing side. They'd always have material spec. and prototype cycle-times for (at least) initial production process parameters.
Thanks for your well thought-out response -
~ Nate
