Objective: To address best practices regarding how to signify bulk material in a BOM.
Difficulty: Easy
In this article:
- How do you implement items that are purchased in bulk and subsequently measured out in production?
- Determine the amount of bulk material used per assembly
- Annotate quantity in assembly BOM
- Create a component in Duro for the material used
- Add material component to the assembly
- Pro tips
This best practices article is to address material that has been ordered in bulk for more than one product or assembly. This article will provide you with helpful suggestions on how to incorporate quantity accurately into your BOM.
How do you implement items that are purchased in bulk and subsequently measured out in production?
In other words, if you order material in bulk for a variety of assemblies, how do you indicate this in your Bill of Materials (BOMs)? The cleanest and most accurate way to do this is to create individual components in Duro for the amount of bulk material used.
For example, let's say you manufacture lamps and ordered a 100ft wire spool to use in production. However, only 3ft of wire is required per lamp you build. Instead of listing 100ft of wire in a BOM for a lamp that requires 3ft, the solution is to create a wire component in Duro with a length of 3ft feet and add that wire component to each lamp assembly with a quantity value set to 1. This method allows more flexibility and reusability as you can create a library of unique components for each discrete length used in assemblies.
Throughout this FAQ, we will explain this process section by section:
- Determine the amount of bulk material used per assembly
- Annotate length in assembly BOM
- Create a component in Duro for the material used
- Add material component to the assembly
Determine the amount of bulk material used per assembly
Determine how much material each assembly requires. More specifically, decide if you have standard lengths you re-use or if each instance is a unique length. In this example, Length is considered a descriptive specification in the same way that wire type, gauge, color, etc., can function as defining characteristics. In this example, the length is listed along with the color and gauge of the wire.
If you use different discrete lengths of the same bulk material, you can create a unique component for each unique length. For example:
- WIRE - 2 FT, 18 AWG, RED
- WIRE - 3 FT, 18 AWG, RED
- WIRE - 4 FT, 18 AWG, RED
These three components are then available to be added to any assembly as a discrete item with the listed specifications.
Annotate quantity in assembly BOM
Once length has been specified, add the amount to the description field of your assembly BOM with the coordinating quantity of bulk material used; this information is also searchable through advanced search. Annotating the quantity of bulk material ensures accurate reporting and uniformity between your BOM details and Duro data. The amount will subsequently be used in the following section to create a component within Duro.
Create a component in Duro for the material used
There are a variety of ways to incorporate your components into Duro including the following:
If you chose to create a component manually, the import wizard will prompt you to insert the length value in a text box (see below GIF). Note: If you select a component category that doesn't have a specification field for length, you can list the length of material in the description field, instead.
If you import from file, include a column that specified length. If you import from vendor, Duro will import the length value from the vendor, along with the rest of the component data.
Add material component to the assembly
Once the component for bulk material has been created in Duro, add it to the coordinating assembly. For more information on how to add components to an assembly, please visit Adding Components to an Assembly.
Pro tips
Bulk upload multiple materials components
Save time when updating your archives with your new materials component information with one upload. If you have more than one materials component to integrate into a Duro assembly, you can import your specs in bulk once you have measurements specified for your components. To learn more about how to utilize this feature, please visit FAQ: Importing Specs in Bulk.
If you have any questions, please reach out to info@durolabs.co.
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