BOMs Away: A Journey Managing Bills of Materials

MIKE THOMAS: So welcome to the session on bills and materials-- A Journey Managing Bills of Materials. My name is Mike Thomas. I'm the technical services manager for Prairie Machine, mining equipment manufacturer in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

So just starting with the safe harbor statement because they make us. So standard [INAUDIBLE] in most of the sessions. So I'm not going to linger here too long.

So here's a big wall of text, a big blur. But what we're going to discuss today is we're going to discuss the bill of materials, what it is, why it's important, what should we do with it, what can we do with it? I'm going to be both technology-agnostic, but, at the same time, talk about where Autodesk fits within this realm-- so talk about the bill of materials as a whole, as well as how Autodesk and their technology fits in here.

So I asked Gemini, "Gemini, what is the bill of materials? And this is what it came up with-- essentially, a comprehensive list of the stuff that goes into a product is what it is. So it did a really good job of summarizing what the bill of materials is. So the bill of materials is all the material, the subassemblies, the purchase items, everything that goes into the product-- so whether it's a piece of equipment, whether it's a part, something that you're selling. And if you were baking a cake, really following any recipe, the bill of materials is the list of ingredients. So with a cake, it's the flour, the sugar, the eggs, the chocolate-- what you're putting in there, both from a description of what it is, but also the quantities of what you're putting in.

BOM management is the process of collecting, organizing, tracking this product information, but also tracking it as the product goes through its evolution-- changing. So that is, in a nutshell, what the bill of materials is. It's the ingredients of baking that cake. It's the bridge between departments. And like we talked about, it's really everything that goes into that equipment or that product. So what we're going to look at is we're going to talk about a BOM-centric approach. We're going to talk about how CAD and other technology can help you with this, talk about the different types of BOM. We'll talk about ERP. We'll talk about PLM. We'll talk about all these systems that rely on and use this bill of materials.

So let's talk about getting our equipment, our products to market. So for the longest time, we had this information on our drawings. So the drawing would show the details on how to build it, what to make it, and then have this list, and you'd have these balloons that call out to particular parts.

Now the problem with just relying on the drawing is that you've got to wait for the drawing to be done. So while we're building our equipment, there's many things that need to get done, and waiting on the drawing can cause this waiting game.

Plus, probably more importantly is how do you get that information out of that drawing? So if it's laborous to maintain, it's going to result in copies of information. It's going to result in silos of information. And what happens if that drawing changes and those silos of information don't update with it? So what's the downstream implications if information does not update all the way through?

What we really want is we want a single source of information. So our stakeholders need access to the current product information by stakeholder. It's really anybody who needs to touch that information and do something with it. So stakeholder could be the engineers, the ones that are designing the product. Stakeholders could be the procurement team who needs to go and buy that product. It could be the heavy-duty mechanics that need to assemble information. We've got various stakeholders that need access to the information.

Now single source of truth is not a new term. At one point in time, it meant kind of a single database. You had the single database, and you collected all your information in that. But nowadays, this isn't plausible. It's not plausible to have this single database. What we do want, though, is we want to have a single system of synchronized information. We want to remove the confusion of false information that happens when we have these multiple copies.

So you can imagine we had something on the drawing, and then someone exported that out, and the procurement team was going off an Excel spreadsheet. Someone else took that and entered it into some jobs. So now we've got this kind of disconnected information. And what if they don't match? So now we've got confusion and finger pointing and it just doesn't work.

So what we want to do is we essentially want to separate that BOM, that bill of materials, from the drawing. And this means that we'll have less time disseminating the information, consuming that product information. And it means that we should be able to share that information downstream quicker-- for example, getting long lead items on an order. So the engineer, as they're designing the equipment or the product, if they can release that BOM, kind of drip feed it through, the procurement team can hop on it and order those long lead items while the engineer is fleshing out the rest of the design.

So here's a statement from Ken Foo, senior director at Autodesk. You can see here the idea of leveraging the same data for different workflows. PTC talks about a digital product definition. It's something that I like. It's a good definition. And the bill of materials is part of this. So this digital product is all the information, so all the data information defining that product throughout its life cycle. So not just the drawings, not just the 3D CAD, but the bill materials, the manufacturing information, design requirements, test results, really any digital asset goes into this digital product definition. And the bill of materials is a key member of that.

Now what Ken Foo is talking about is talking about the digital thread. So it's really the superhighway of information. So the digital thread makes it easier for teams to work together, make better choices, and get things done faster because they're working off that same information.

What are the keys? The keys are connectivity. We need connected workflows-- so linking all the different systems and processes and data sources so that we don't have these separate silos of information. We want collaboration, so we want the single source of truth. So we want communications across all departments and disciplines internally and externally and everywhere.

But we also want traceability. We need clear and an audible trail of the products' information-- how did it change. And we want to make data-driven decisions. So how do we start? Well, we got to become BOM-centric. We want the bill of materials essentially be front and center and the head of the train as it's going down the superhighway of information.

So we're talking about the bill of materials and how to put it out in front. But what goes into a bill of materials? Well, the two key ones, right off the top, is a unique identifier and the quantity. So parts form the foundation of your bill of materials. We talked about how it's the recipe. It's the ingredients that go into that. So you need some type of unique identifier, like the part number. Now don't get me started on smart part numbering systems. They don't always work. But you need some type of identifier so you can differentiate between them.

You also need the quantity. If I'm baking a cake, how do I bake that cake if I don't know how many eggs to put in it? So not only do I need to know the eggs but how many eggs are in there. So description is obviously something very useful, something I can quickly glance at and understand what that particular part is. We usually have some type of level or structured to indicate the hierarchy, so 1 and 1.1, 1.2, and 1.2.1, or there's other ways of doing it, but so we can differentiate this nut and bolt go into this subassembly, everything gets put together, and then that goes up a level into the next one.

From there, really what it comes down to who is using the bill of materials? So who are the customers of it? Perhaps what you want is you want comments. Maybe you have some type of assembly instructions or some other type of important information for whatever the task at hand is. Maybe the stock number, maybe a manufacturer and a manufacturer part number, maybe the mass, maybe the material, maybe the paint color. What information is relevant? So if the bill materials is your recipe, then it helps everyone understand how the product is being built.

However, depending on your step in baking that cake, it might mean something different to you. So if I'm going to the store, then I need to know the ingredients and the quantities. But for the one who's baking the cake after I bring the ingredients home, not only do you need the ingredients and quantities, but they need to instructions on what to do with it. And then, after the cake is done, how's the best way of serving it? Do we put ice cream with it? Do we put whipped cream on it? Do we just eat it as it is?

So there's actually different types of builds materials. These are some of the common terminology for them. You may find others. These are the ones that we utilize. So we have our engineering BOM, which obviously is the engineers. This is the ones that when they're defining the product, when they're building that equipment and designing it, that's the engineering. So things that go into what is it.

From there, there's the manufacturing bill of materials. So this is how does it actually get built? And then there's the service BOM, which is kind after the equipment is done and in the customer's hand. What does that look like? Is that representing the as-built? Is that representing what's changed? Is that the serviceable parts? So we have these different types of bills of materials. And they could actually be in completely different systems. But we want to make sure they're all tied together.

So if we think about a day in the life of a bill of materials, it might start in sales. So in sales, the salesperson is talking with the customer, and they kind of rough out, kind of chunky, what is this going to do? They take that and, with the engineer, they refine it a little bit, get the more costly things in there so they can provide a quote. That goes to quote. We get the order. Now what happens? Well, engineering goes full-force and they fully design and flush out that product.

So now you've got your engineering BOM completed. Well, with that done, it's now time to actually manufacture it. So it gets tossed over to production, and production will take that and tweak it. Maybe they add material. Maybe they restructure it, reorder it because the way engineering had it doesn't quite fit into the production workflow. And then, again, once it gets to the customer, they need to, well, what parts should I buy as replacement parts?

So where does the bill of materials start? If we talk about 2D CAD, AutoCAD does not have dedicated BOM tools, but there are other products like AutoCAD Mechanical and AutoCAD Electrical. We use AutoCAD Mechanical for hydraulic schematics. So we will actually define a lot of the hydraulic components, and that will go straight to the procurement team so that they can buy it. We also do our electrical schematics and panel layouts in AutoCAD Electrical for the same reasons is that as we're designing it, we have all the component information coming along with it, and that too can then get passed along to production and procurement.

Now just to talk about AutoCAD Mechanical, AutoCAD Mechanical uses these part references, where I can tag information. The big thing here is that the bill of materials is live. So as the drawing changes, the bill of materials automatically updates to match, and the metadata can be anything that you want to track. And it doesn't have to be AutoCAD Mechanical-specific objects. You can take a line or a circle and tag it with some information.

So, here, what I'm going to do is I'm going to tag this tire, and I'm going to give it a name. I'm going to give it a description. And I realized that it doesn't have all the information I need. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to add in some metadata, some properties. I'm going to add the manufacturer. And I'm going to use this manufacturer, obviously, to tag other information, which this is important so that the procurement team buys the right product.

Now, instead of recreating it, I'm just going to duplicate that part reference because there's two tires on this bike. And that way, the bill of materials will automatically count too. Well, let's do the same with the rim. So I'm going to define what this rim is. We're going to call it Wheel. We'll put the manufacturer in it. And the same thing is that we'll copy that information so that I don't have to duplicate it, but yet it still shows two.

Now this mudflap here is actually a block. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tag that block with information. And that way, anywhere where that block is used is going to automatically have that information-- work smarter, not harder.

Well, if we're going to look at this bill of materials now, I can see that it's already collected all that information-- the descriptions, the names. And I'm going to change the description here. And just to show that if I change it in bill of materials, if I go back and look at that component, notice that it updated there as well. So it's bidirectional. I can change it wherever I want to change it.

So let's just change the information in that part reference. Go back and notice that the bill of materials is updated. Not happy with the order, so we'll just sort it. We'll renumber it so that we get this in the desired order. Now it is exportable. You can also import information from other systems. OK, we'll balloon it because what's important is that we identify where those parts are so someone can follow-- can find it.

And what I'm going to do now is just add another part. So we're going to add the pedal at the bottom, give it some information. I made the quantity too, and we can see that it was added. So I added one part reference, but I just set the quantity to 2. And we can see that it was inserted and added.

Now I can take this information or a subset of that bill of materials information and actually insert it into the drawing. So now I'm kind of getting the best of both worlds. I've got this 2D drawing that's detailed, which shows where the parts are and the information that's important for the person who's assembling it. But yet, in the background, I've got all this information about really what anybody else would need to use with it. So that's just within 2D. So we can obviously do that within AutoCAD Mechanical, where we have this smart system of information.

Now if you're using a 3D CAD system, obviously any design and manufacturing-related systems-- so we use Autodesk Inventor. But if you're using SolidWorks, if you're using CATIA, if you're using Creo, they will all do this. In fact, Fusion 360 just got the bill of materials added.

So I like to say that if you build it, the BOM will come. So the bill of materials just falls along with it automatically. And, in Inventor, the building material is a table. It's a table of all the meta-information. So all the components that you add to your assemblies automatically collect into your bill of materials. So it's the part numbers and descriptions and the quantities and other key information.

Now not to dismiss the drawing-- I know we talked about it before-- but the drawing is important in certain situations. And just like we just saw with that bike in AutoCAD Mechanical, in Inventor, I can place in the parts list. And the parts list is filtering out all that metadata, all that bill of materials information to include just the important details for the drawing.

So what we do is we don't include any purchasing-related information, so we don't necessarily include the manufacturer, the manufacturer part numbers on the drawing because the people are putting it together don't actually need to know. What they need to know is they need to know our part number. They need to know the quantities. They need to the description. And they're able to put it together.

So, for us, we keep that information in the background, and we provide that to our purchasing team in a different way. So again, the Inventor bill of materials that knows masses and it knows materials and it knows descriptions, all this information, but you can choose just a subset of it-- what's important for on the drawing.

So here, we look at the bill of materials, and I have this table and we can actually put this in different views. So having different views for different people is important. So in Inventor, we can have a structured view, which is our assemblies and how they're built-- so the assembly and the subassemblies and the components in those assemblies. We can also have a parts-only view, which removes all of the parts information-- or, sorry, the assembly information, the hierarchy, and just shows me all the parts is what it does there.

Now if we look here, what I can see is that the table frame assembly is currently set to Phantom, which means that it's not going to appear anywhere. It's just a way of grouping it together from a design perspective, kind of like having a folder, but yet from a bill of materials perspective, that does not appear. So if I go to the Structure tab, you're not going to see it because all of its components are essentially promoted to the top.

Now I'm going to change that arbor press assembly because maybe we decided, instead of building it ourselves, we're just going to buy it. Now it's been set to purchase. But if I go to the Structure tab, it's no different. I still see all the components within it. But if I go to the Parts Only tab, notice that it's a single line now that I can't expand because if you think about a purchaser who's buying something, they don't care about how many parts are in it or how it's assembled. What they know is that they need to buy that item and get it there. So that's where the purchase comes into.

Now inseparable is really, really similar. Inseparable-- what it will do is notice that, from this view, it's exactly the same. On the Parts Only view, it's also the same. So what's different? Well, let's say we decided to buy the pipe that goes into that table. Well, now what happens is from the Parts Only view is it lists that table frame as a inseparable, like I can't deal with it differently. But that pipe needs to be purchased, so it actually pulls it and pulls it to the top. So it pulls it out and puts it at the top.

Let's change some information here. So we're going to change the stock number and description. And just notice that if I go back to that component, it's been updated there as well. So it's a collection of information. So you do it on the part, happens to the bill of materials, and you go back. We'll just set this back to phantom.

And if we look at things like Quantity-- I'm just going to renumber these and then renumber them so they're grouped together. But if we look at the quantities is we may want things to automatically merge together or we want them separate. If I wanted to see every piece of square tubing, I wouldn't merge. But, in this case, maybe what we want to show is we just want to show the total amount of square tubing that's available.

Now I'm going to change the part number here. And notice that it pulled those, and I've got some Varies now, or it merged them together. I got some varies is because the stock number differs. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to change the stock number so that the stock number is the same for both of them. And what we'll see here is that, notice, we have no longer have Varies on there.

Now if I just pull this back just a little bit and we just let it go forward here, when I did that, we still have something that Varies. So I go to that tab-- still says Varies. Why does this say Varies? Well, what we have there is we have different lengths of angle. So the unit length between the different instances differs. But what the quantity is doing is it's taking all those merged instances and showing me the total quantity.

So what I'm trying to show here is I'm trying to show that you can massage the bill of materials to get that in the form that you need it in. So maybe what you want is you want a bill of materials that shows you the total steel required so it can be purchased, and you'll let them cut it up based on the drawing later. Or maybe you'd like to show it with each piece separate so that you have this cut length list to work from. So that's the Inventor bill of materials. And like I said, it would be similar in a lot of systems.

So we've got this information. We've got this information in CAD. Whether it's 2D or 3D, we've got this information. How do we manage it? How do we pull it together? How do we get it from there into other systems? So, really, to build that digital thread, we can't really manage it from the 3D model nor the 2D drawing. There's just too many moving pieces. There's no traceability.

So for the engineering folks, your probably default is like, hey, we can do this in Excel. I don't know why, but we just seem to always default that we can do in Excel. And I think it's because Excel is convenient. It's easy to use because everyone uses it. But the problem is it lacks control. And even worse is it's too easy to duplicate it. And now you've got all these multiple versions floating all over the place. And even if you were somehow able to wrangle it all together, how do you update these spreadsheets smartly when the changes happen to the design? So there has to be something better than Excel.

So something that will work is what's called product data management or PDM. So you really don't want to treat your BOM any differently than the drawing or the 3D model. It's going to go through iterations. As the design evolves, as revisions happen, that changes. So you want to be able to manage those revisions. And you also want to make sure that everyone is working from the same correct version. So PDMs track change. They track revisions throughout the design process. PDM is really focused on engineering, and that's where it lives.

We use Autodesk Vault Professional. The Professional is the key is because we use items and the item master and the bill of materials that comes with that. So our Inventor 3D models, as well as our architectural drawings and AutoCAD Mechanical drawings-- and you can actually build the bill of materials from scratch as well-- but that's what we use to create these items and have these bill of materials. And then we lifecycle manage our items. So not only does this provide a revision control view of the BOM but also the associated 3D models and 2D drawings.

Vault provides part history. So we can go back and see what changed and when it changed. As we control the lifecycle, we can actually pick and choose what details we want to release. So we might actually take an assembly-- and going back to the long lead items-- we'll do this is where we know-- so what we'll do is we'll release the item but only certain components within that so that manufacturing and production and procurement can kind go ahead while the design is being fleshed out.

We also have-- the shop floor has access to it. But what we do is we limit shop floor access to only the released version. So it's gone through the whole change order process, the drawing, the model-- everything's approved and been released. Now the shop floor has it. Engineering makes a change. They move it into work-in-progress to do that change order. But yet the shop floor still continues to look at only the released version. Same with procurement. Same with the production team. They're only looking at that release version while engineering is making the revision. And then, once it gets rereleased and reapproved, then that information is put out to everybody.

Now in the Autodesk ecosphere, Vault is actually just one option. And, like I said, it's not the only one. You could actually use Upchain instead. So Upchain is a cloud-based product management and product lifecycle management software. Its positioning is that it's in the cloud, whereas Autodesk Vault is on-premise. So you actually need a server and a SQL database, and you do that on-premise, where Upchain is in the cloud. And Autodesk will tell you that it's instant on, essentially, out-of-the-box to get all the functionality.

Now Autodesk also has a bunch of different bundles. So the Autodesk Vault PLM integrates Vault Professional and Fusion Lifecycle-- or Fusion Manage, I should say. And that's where if you want to have PDM and PLM, you can go that route. You can go Upchain. Upchain by itself would give you your PDM as well as I would call it PLM lite, so some PLM functionality. But there's also the Autodesk Fusion Manage bundle, which is Fusion Manage as well as Upchain. So you have lots of different options. And I would suggest that you talk to your reseller or your Autodesk account rep to find out what's the best path for you.

So you really have a world of options. So if you have multiple CAD systems, it could actually pose a challenge trying to find the one system that manages it all. And maybe you'll have to have multiple PDMs. So most CAD system vendors will also provide a PDM. So Autodesk has Vault and Upchain. SolidWorks has the SolidWorks PDM. But you can also look at a standalone system, something like Open BOM.

You may also find that your ERP or PLM system actually provides this as well, so you don't need two different systems. For example, PTC Windchill-- Windchill will do essentially everything-- PDM, PLM, and much more. You could also consider the Autodesk Platform Services, which was used to be known as Forge, which is slowly, quickly, however, we want to look at it, becoming Autodesk's backbone for all the data and all the various systems they have. So if you wanted to connect Vault to the Autodesk Construction Cloud, you would need to look at the Forge platform-- the Autodesk Platform Services to get that connected. So you have lots of options.

Now if you're using Fusion 360, you're a little bit limited here. Within Fusion 360, Autodesk has just added bill of materials functionality to it. That bill of materials is actually based on the Autodesk Platform Services in the background. So it's the first in the ecosphere that does that. And on top of Fusion 360 is Fusion Teams, which gives you a central location for your designs and versions, but it's not a PDM. So options are a little bit limited if you're using Fusion 360 as well as the bill of materials is still new. So it's only limited for now. Autodesk will address this, I'm sure.

So what's next? For us, we have our designs happening. So engineering is heads down. They are in AutoCAD. They are in Inventor. They're designing this. That ends up in Vault Professional. Within Vault Professional, it goes through the change order process. We have items that are released, so approved and released, and that then becomes available for downstream use.

If a change needs to happen, change order is initiated. The change order then puts that into WIP, which bumps the revision. They go back into the CAD system, make the changes, comes back, updates the item as well as the bill of materials. It goes through the review process, gets approved and gets rereleased. And, again, that information then becomes available downstream.

So what else do we do with this? So like we talked about is the bill of materials is your complete view of your product. It's versatile. It's used across many systems and processes. It's not just system but processes, and more than just PDM. So the bill of materials is important because it gives you that structured and comprehensive view of your equipment or the product, and it really gives you that efficient management of dealing with that product and distributing that information across all the stakeholders.

We use it in ERP enterprise resource planning. We also use it in ecommerce. But here's just a list. I just googled, "What systems are the bill of materials used in?" And you can see here-- ERP, PLM. It's used in manufacturing execution systems. This is scheduling and clocking time and assembly instructions. This is what happens in an MES. But also dealing with supply chains and service, and the list goes on and on and on. It's just to highlight all the different areas and avenues that you can take that information and push it towards.

So what is ERP? Well, ERP supports entire business. I should say, first, Autodesk does not do ERP. We use ERP essentially for all our day-to-day core business processes. So we do coding in it. We take orders in it. We build the jobs, so define the jobs-- how the thing's going to get done. We do purchasing. We do shipping and receiving out of it. We track time. It actually provides kind of a MES life for us.

We can actually track time and distribute assembly or job instructions through it. We do our scheduling in it and then all finance happens in it-- so accounts payable, accounts receivable happens within our ERP system. So, for us, it is really the backbone to the business. We really have two. We have engineering, which is the Vault. And then we have ERP, which is kind of everything else.

So, for us, what we do is we use the PDM. And PDM is kind of engineering is this is designed and done. So this is our e-BOM. And then what we do is we actually kind of toss it over the fence, but a little bit more smart than that. What that does is that BOM then becomes a key component of the method of manufacturing?

So here, I've just got two shots here. I've got one, which is our bill of materials in Vault. And then you can see how that became the basis of the method. And then what happens is the BOM is all the materials. But then what we do is we add all the actions, the operations required, assembly and welding and cutting and subcontract operations, to actually make it happen. So we send our e-BOM, like I just said, to ERP, which then becomes the BOM and the method of manufacturing. Method of manufacturing in our system is really the job template. So when a job is created, you pick the template, and then it's go time.

How we make that happen is we actually use a product from Qbuild called CADLink. And this is just a direct-- now it says two-way link. We actually only use it in one direction. But the product itself can go two ways, and they will tell you that it's between CAD and ERP. We actually have it from PDM to ERP.

But we could actually skip that process. We would need PDM, and we could actually go straight from Inventor, and we could push the build materials right from Inventor into our ERP system. We like it because we can do comparisons and then a controlled synchronization. And by that, I mean I do this comparison. I say, OK, the method was built off Rev A. I'm now at Rev B in my Vault. I can see that there's four parts that I've changed. I'm really only going to push three right now to let it finish, and then maybe I'll come back and do the rest later.

So we do this because we wanted a smooth data integration. We didn't want to manage through exporting and importing because it's laborious. It's flawed. We just want to be able to essentially click and go. Now we could set this up to have an automatic flow, but we like it that it's controlled and that once it's released or approved, then what we can do is we can then push that information. So essentially let engineering and the e-BOM kind of drive what happens in the ERP system.

So what's product lifecycle management, or PLM? This is really managing the product right through its journey, so right from initial conception, through manufacturing, marketing, and its eventual retirement. Lots of overlaps between it and ERP and kind of where it fits.

Again, you wouldn't have to have PDM. You could actually start with the PLM and go the other way. So maybe you start in PLM, you kind of flush it out, and then you use that as the basis to start your design. Or you might do a little bit in CAD, push that into PLM, and not have a PDM or ERP system. So by no means are these all interconnected that you need them.

Now this image is a little bit older, but I think it still highlights where PDM starts and ends and where PLM kind of takes over. So PDM is really engineering-focused. So you can see here version control release, the bill of materials. We're really trying to manage that CAD and kind of engineering-related information, whereas PLM is not so much engineering, but more product as a whole information.

It will manage new product introductions, so NPI. You can have tasks and actions. You can have that bill of materials, but on top of that bill of materials, also have supplier information and do supplier management through it. You can have specifications. You can have configurations. And then you can track that specific instance of the equipment right until it gets shelf and it gets retired.

So in the Autodesk sphere, what our ecosystem is-- there's Autodesk Fusion Manage. So it's a cloud-based PLM system, as most PLM systems are nowadays, and it's streamlined to improve the collaboration through the entire process.

So you can go from CAD to PLM. You can also go from PDM-- let's say like Vault-- into PLM. Now Autodesk doesn't really have any integrated solution to go from Vault to Fusion Manage or from Upchain to Fusion Manage or from Vault to Upchain. This is kind of going to be up to you. There's different products. You can look at Jitterbit. The coolOrange stuff is really cool, and it will do a lot of this for you, especially from Vault to ERP or Vault to PLM. But you're going to have to have some type of bridge.

We use a bit of a homegrown solution to get the information from Vault into our parts catalog system and then manage it that way. But we're looking at using PLM in Fusion Manage as that service BOM so that we can push the information and really reduce the amount of stick-handling hand-holding to get that information across.

So to wrap this up, a key business driver should be getting that bills of materials front and center and kind of making it the engine on the train of that product going through. So you want a digital thread. And, again, the digital thread is not just the bill of materials, but the bill of materials is a key part of it. What we want is we really want to prioritize flexibility. You want to have quick adjustments in response to changes in product in the product design. The market is changing. The customer requests are changing, but you want to be kind of agile and flexible to that and adapt to that.

And then, instead of sticking to a particular fixed BOM, you want that iterative development. So we want that BOM that evolves as the design goes, and we don't necessarily want to wait for the design to be done to start working on it. We want to be as quick as possible. But yet we still want to ensure that as the product designs or is evolving, that we're still using all-- everyone's on the same page. Everyone's using the same relevant information.

So that goes to the whole collaboration part of it. We want close coordination between everyone-- design, engineering, procurement, production-- everyone is aligned with that. And we want to leverage the digital tools. So we want to leverage the 3D CAD. We want to leverage various systems like ERP and PLM and PDM to get that out.

And remember that your BOM and BOM management should be driven by the customer. Now the customer might change. The customer might be internal-- procurement. They're a customer. Production-- they're a customer. Whoever needs that information is a customer. And, obviously, you have your external customers who also need to-- what do they need from it?

So, hopefully, that helps. Hopefully, that gives you some ideas and some things to think about and take back and look at. I want to thank you for sitting in on this and listening to the talk. You can find me on the various social medias. Reach out to me-- be happy to talk about this and anything else. Thank you.