Designing an Access bill of materials database? Watch out...
Developing your own Microsoft Access bill of materials
management software is certainly attractive. After all, you
just want a list of parts and quantities, right? And isn't
this a perfect use of Microsoft Access or other inexpensive
desktop database?
 |
Internally-developed BOM databases can
become enormously expensive. Your
users will demand more features, and you'll be spending your time
developing and managing your system. Compare the cost of your time
with an affordable PLM system: you'll discover that our
professionally-developed software is more cost-efficient. |
No, and no.
Because you'll also want to:
- Search for items across various data
properties, regardless of what bill of material they appear
on
- Auto-generate a part number according to its assigned
item category
- Identify and exclude unreleased or
obsolete parts from released bills of material
- Approve
changes to your current bills of materials
- Maintain a version
history of your bills of materials
- Attach electronic
files to items on your BOM, including CAD files, procedures,
specifications, quotes and website links
- Control access
to certain proprietary data
- Create multi-level bill of
materials reports, consolidated parts lists, and
cost/materials rollups
- Manage material content to meet
evolving recycling and disposal regulations
- Export bills
of materials for your supply chain partners
- Work within
a modern user interface that lets you drag-and-drop parts,
undo actions, and enjoy "nice to haves" like spellchecking
- Offer context-sensitive online user documentation and
BOM best practice guidelines
- Add more users as your
company grows, despite the very real limitations that Access
imposes on simultaneous users
Creating a useful bill of
materials database application is difficult and
time-consuming, and requires the complete understanding of
subtle business rules for revision control and change
processing. How will you ensure the preceding revision is
canceled when the new revision is released? Will new item
revisions automatically replace canceled revisions? How are
units of measure converted? Do your users want to attach
design files and assembly instructions to items on the BOM?
What's the best recursion routine for printing indented
product structures? What performance can your expect from
your Access bill of materials database as your company
grows? Do you really want that phone call every time someone
wrecks the permissions file?
What starts out as a "fun little
project" quickly becomes a major distraction.
Fortunately, there's an easier way... Let PLM experts do
it for you!
Simple, flexible bill of materials software: PDXpert PLM
PDXpert product lifecycle management (PLM)
has been specifically designed to provide the following BOM
management capabilities:
- Quickly find relevant items
using powerful attribute search
- Easily drag-and-drop the
most current data onto bill of material markups
- Instantly know an item's status (e.g., unqualified,
qualified, obsolete)
- Work separately with current releases and proposed markups
- Enforce rules for each assembly type to ensure correct product
structure contents
- Obtain insight into both assembly line-item costs and
RoHS/WEEE materials lifecycle costs
- Retain a full audit
trail of all changes to the bill of materials, including
when and why it was changed, who approved the changes, how
affected items were dispositioned, and the total recurring
and non-recurring cost
- Navigate up and down the BOM
hierarchy just by simple double-clicks
- Change system
rules and configuration options without special programming
- Support system growth from a single user to hundreds of
users with scalable Microsoft SQL Server
- Report and
export product data for your supply chain partners in Adobe
Acrobat PDF and Microsoft Excel XLS file formats
- Yet, even though we've spent literally man-years making PDXpert
PLM among the best bill of materials software, it's still a
surprisingly affordable alternative to in-house BOM software
development.
PDXpert PLM software
can increase sales revenue through faster product
releases; lower product costs by using more accurate BOMs;
and reduce administrative overhead by providing important
supporting information (like cost and material roll-ups)
automatically.
Watch how fast and easy bill of material management can be! Or, for more details and
a screen image, see PDXpert PLM's structure management features.
See for yourself how PDXpert PLM is better than an Access BOM database
PDXpert PLM has been specifically designed for small and mid-sized
companies moving up to automated bill of material management. It's easy for users to find their
items using free-form text search, then create complex
products by simple drag-and-drop BOM construction.
We invite you to: