Does the BOM Really Matter?

A development team works together to define Parts that together define a Product:

• A Part is a collection of information that is highly interconnected within a Part and across Parts.
• A team is made up of people from different domains or organizations which provide different points-of-view and skills to the development process.
• The development process is chaotic and converges through effective trade-off and awareness.

15 plus years ago concurrent engineering was established as the standard development strategy. Concurrent engineering maintained that a Team must be co-located and cross-functional and that by doing so they would overcome and best manage the magnitude of relationships and trade-offs that exist between Parts and people. Any product development book written in the last 15 years will detail concurrent engineering and go as far as detailing the impact of how distance between people has a direct affect on the outcome of the development process. Maximum effective distance is accepted to be 50-100 feet depending on the book and supporting research. Distance between people is directly related to a Team’s ability to stay aware.

Concurrent engineering has been under continual siege. Co-location is all but destroyed, replaced with distributed and out sourced Teams while at the same time product complexity increased, timelines and budgets reduced and face-to-face team meetings have been replaced by email.

A culture of micro messaging has taken hold in life and product development.

Does distance have a connection with BOM?  Does a BOM improve a Team’s ability to stay aware?  PLMers love to debate the BOM and approaches to BOM management.  How people organize Parts has no basis in keeping people informed.  Let Team members organize Parts how they see fit.  Let messages find people no matter where they are.  Let people find information about Parts when they want in whatever structure they want.