What are bills of material?
Bills of material (BOMs) are used to define the manufacturing specifications for your products or those you make on behalf of others. Manufacturing specifications include “outputs”, “revisions”, a “routing”, and “components.”
A bill of materials or product structure (sometimes bill of material, BOM or associated list) is a list of the raw materials, sub-assemblies, intermediate assemblies, sub-components, parts and the quantities of each needed to manufacture an end product.
A manufacturing Bill of Materials is essentially a meticulous set of instructions that contains a list of all the parts, items, assemblies and sub-assemblies necessary to build a complete product that can be shipped to customers.
It tells all personnel involved in the procurement and manufacturing chain exactly what to purchase, how to purchase and where to purchase all the raw materials and parts required. Furthermore, it includes detailed instructions on how to assemble the product from conception through to the finished product ready for shipping – including all the packaging and instruction materials etc.