Designing an Access bill of materials database? Watch out...
Developing
your own Microsoft Access bill of materials management software is certainly attractive. After all,
you just want a list of parts and quantities, right? And isn't this a perfect use
of MS Access, MySQL, or other inexpensive desktop database?
No, and no.
Because you'll also want to:
- Search for items across various data properties, regardless
of what bill of material they appear on
- Auto-generate a part number according to its assigned item
category
- Identify and exclude unreleased or obsolete parts from released
bills of material
- Approve changes to current bills of materials
- Maintain a version history of your bills of materials
- Attach electronic files to items on your BOM, including CAD files, procedures,
specifications, quotes and website links
- Control access to certain proprietary data
- Create multi-level bill of materials reports, consolidated parts lists, and
cost/materials rollups
- Manage material content to meet evolving recycling and
disposal regulations
- Export bills of materials for your supply chain partners
- Work within a modern user interface that lets you drag-and-drop
parts, undo actions, and enjoy "nice to haves" like spellchecking
- Offer context-sensitive online user documentation and
BOM best
practice guidelines
- Add more users as your company grows, despite the very
real limitations that Access imposes on simultaneous users
Creating a useful bill of materials database application is difficult and
time-consuming, and requires the complete understanding of subtle business rules
for revision control and change processing. How will you ensure the preceding
revision is canceled when the new revision is released? Will new item revisions automatically replace canceled revisions? How
are units of measure converted? Do your users want to attach design files and
assembly instructions to items on the BOM? What's the best recursion routine for
printing indented product structures? What performance can your expect from your
Access bill of materials database as your company grows? Do you really
want that phone call every time someone wrecks the LDB file?
What starts out as a "fun little
project" quickly becomes a major distraction.
Fortunately, there's an
easier way...
Let someone else do it!
Simple, flexible bill of materials software: PDXpert PLM
PDXpert
product lifecycle management (PLM) has been specifically designed to provide the
following BOM management capabilities:
- Quickly find relevant items using powerful attribute search
- Easily drag-and-drop the most current data onto bill of
material markups
- Instantly know an item's status (e.g., unqualified, qualified,
obsolete)
- Work separately with current releases and proposed markups
- Enforce rules for each assembly type to ensure
correct product structure contents
- Obtain insight into both assembly line-item costs and RoHS/WEEE
materials lifecycle costs
- Retain a full audit trail of all changes to the bill of
materials, including
when and why it was changed, who approved the changes, how affected items were
dispositioned, and the total recurring and non-recurring cost
- Navigate up and down the BOM hierarchy just by simple double-clicks
- Change system rules and configuration options without special programming
- Support system growth from a single user to hundreds of users
with scalable Microsoft SQL Server
- Report and export product data for your supply chain
partners in Adobe Acrobat PDF and Microsoft Excel XLS file formats
Yet, even though we've spent literally man-years making PDXpert PLM
among the best bill of materials software, it's still
a surprisingly affordable alternative to in-house BOM software development.
Learn more about how PDXpert PLM can manage your BOMs
The benefits of PDXpert PLM software include
increased sales revenue through
faster product releases;
lower
product costs by using more accurate BOMs; and
lower administrative overhead
by providing important supporting information (like cost and material roll-ups)
automatically.
We invite you to:
So, shouldn't you be concentrating on product development and production,
rather than
bill of materials database design? You'll find that PDXpert PLM is almost always more
cost-effective than even the most basic in-house MS Access bill of materials
system.
Register now to download a free
evaluation copy of PDXpert
PLM software
070802.1944