Replace your Excel BOM spreadsheets with real bill of materials software
Are you using Excel BOM spreadsheets for bill of material management?
New companies often begin their path to product lifecycle
management software by looking for Excel bill of material
spreadsheets. These BOM spreadsheet templates are easy to
create, and can be useful for a short period. (We've even
created a
free Excel bill of material template & example.)
 |
Spreadsheets are a cheap
tool for managing bills of materials. But they're surprisingly
costly to create, and frequent errors make them expensive to use. |
However, after you have several Excel BOM spreadsheets, you'll begin to see the complexity and
expense of maintaining them. And the risk of costly
production errors rises significantly as your collection of bill
of materials spreadsheets grows.
The problem?
Excel bill of material spreadsheets cannot
enforce product data accuracy. You're working with bits of data,
not a consistent part object. One cell is treated pretty much the same as
any other cell. Repeated data must be entered over and over again. There's no history of who changed something, when or why it
was changed, or whether you're looking at the approved revision of each
item. Attaching related design files and identifying qualified supplier
parts is tedious and time-consuming.
Managing multi-level indented Excel BOMs is virtually impossible. For example,
consider an automobile's electric window motor assembly, common to 4 door
locations. Listing these motor assemblies within the complete product
structure requires you to manage 4 identical lists, one for each door
assembly.
Every individual cell is an never-ending source of
potential - and very expensive - errors.
Using specialized bill of materials
capabilities in PDXpert PLM software
PDXpert PLM software is specifically designed avoid to
the limitations of BOM spreadsheets. It's quite easy to:
- Assign part numbers including your
custom category-based prefix rules
- Update bills of materials automatically
on release of a new component revision
- Use free-form text search to precisely locate parts and
alternatives
- Drag and drop data-rich items onto the bill of material
- Use built-in where used lists to
immediately examine what assemblies use an item, where it appears
as a source, and what changes have affected it
- Print multi-level indented bills of materials, and roll-up costs
and materials into top-level product structures
- Maintain a complete revision history with full audit
trail of all changes made to the bill of materials
- Permit only selected users access
to unreleased and obsolete parts, documents and assemblies
- Create unlimited supplier sources with preferred rank
- Attach design, production and acceptance files directly
to database items, for immediate viewing by engineers,
quality personnel and supply chain managers
- Export part list data for your supply chain partners in Adobe Acrobat PDF
and Microsoft Excel XLS file formats
- Enjoy the advantages of professionally developed
and maintained software: valuable features that go beyond simple bill of material
management; comprehensive, context-sensitive documentation;
professional configuration and operation advice; training
materials; on-going feature improvements
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.
Learn more about how PDXpert PLM can replace your Excel
bill of material spreadsheets
PDXpert PLM has been specifically designed for smaller
organizations making the transition to automated product
structure 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: