Understanding Bills of Material

A bill of material identifies the manufacture of finished products (end items), subassemblies, and components. Before you create a bill of material, you must first understand the types of bills of material and how they are used. Then you can create a bill of material; define its components, enter reference, grade, or potency information, and substitute item information as necessary. After you have entered bills of material, you can review them to plan and research engineering change orders; view the results of a pending product change; determine the effect of an item shortage; or evaluate capacity, manpower, equipment needs, and other resources.

Use a bill of material to accomplish specific actions:

• Detail specific items and quantities that are used to assemble the parent item.

• Define items as parents or components in the assembly.

• Provide the foundation for Product Costing and Master Production Schedule programs.

A properly structured bill of material:

• Enables efficient storage and maintenance of bill of material information.

• Reflects material flow and how the product is built.

• Permits easy order entry.

• Enables the system to display the master schedule in the fewest end items possible.

• Enables forecasting of optional product features.

An inaccurate bill of material might result in problems:

• Poor material planning.

• Material shortages.

• Inaccurate product costing.

• Increased production costs.

• Delayed shipments.

• Lost sales.

• Excess and obsolete inventory.

• Poor specification control.

• Increased product liability.

The features and functionality that are associated with bills of material enable you to complete these tasks:

• Replace all occurrences of one component with another.

• Plan for component scrap in JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Product Costing and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Shop Floor Management.

• Substitute one component for another.

• View the producible quantity of an end item for the amount of the component that you enter.

• Print complete bill of material information.

• Copy an existing bill of material and make changes for a new item.

• Offset the required date of a component in a work order from the order start date.

• Locate all bills of material that use a specified part.

• Create multiple versions of the bills of material to present information in formats that are tailored to the needs of different departments.

• Track the status of all bill of material changes.

• Define where a component is located within a specific assembly.

• Check an item's low-level codes.

• Inquire on a bill of material by using a single-level or multilevel format.

Using bills of material in a multiple-plant environment enables you to define different manufacturing data, such as order policy or lot size, for an item that is used in different branches.

You can specify the effective dates for component parts on a bill of material and nonstock, bulk, and expense items. You can also add notes describing tool requirements.

The system uses a bill of material as a master list when generating the parts lists for work orders; cost roll-ups; leadtime roll-ups; Master Production Schedule (MPS), Material Requirements Planning (MRP), and Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP) generation; and kit processing for sales orders.