Building BoMs with Bad Spare Parts Data

Our blog has extensively covered the topic of Bills of Materials (or BoMs), whether it be a post about building better BoMs, the effects of poor maintenance BoMs, or simplifying BoMs. As our most recent blog on the topic helpfully describes them, BoMs can be thought of as recipes for making a final product. In the context of EAM and CMMS systems, a BoM is a list of spare parts and other materials needed to manufacture or maintain a larger piece of equipment. A well-kept BoM can be a really helpful tool for finding and selecting spare parts in your EAM system. However, bad spare parts data can make for poor BoMs and even poorer workflow processes.

Poor quality materials data means poor quality BoMs

There are lots of different ways that poor quality materials data can hinder how efficiently your asset intensive business uses BoMs. If your spare parts are inaccurately named, are missing certain characteristics, or are even obsolete, finding them in a bill of materials is going to take more time and effort than if your EAM system has high quality spare parts data. What’s worse, bad spare parts data may mean that there is no BoM in your EAM system at all. This leads to even more time spent building BoMs that may not even be accurate because of poor quality spare parts data. Even more time may be wasted waiting for spare parts to be created in the EAM system in the first place so that they can be added to your newly created BoM. You may also have to wait for a specialist to verify that the BoM data is correct before the BoM can be loaded into your EAM system. These additional steps can be costly. They may also lead to increased downtime or a backlog of tasks. What’s more, creating reports or analyzing information based off of these poorly built (or even non-existent) BoMs becomes a much more cumbersome and extensive process.

Make your BoM greater than the sum of its parts

A materials cleanse can help correct the bad spare parts data that is leading to the inefficient use of your BoMs. Parts descriptions and characteristics become accurate, duplicate and obsolete parts are removed, and naming conventions and processes become standardized. Having a materials cleansing solution that enables your spare parts to be more easily searched and selected can make a big difference in saving your plant time and money. To learn more about how NRX AssetHub can be a part of your materials cleansing solution, check out one of our resources below, or book a demo with us to speak with our experts!