Real-time manufacturing data demands real-time BOM collaboration

New technologies continue to reshape manufacturing as we knew it. It’s amazing to see how connectivity, sensors, IoT, global connectivity and data access are changing manufacturing.

Technology is enabling people’s wildest dreams by allowing manufacturing to achieve greater speed, scale, and simplicity with their operations across the value chain.

The 7wdata article, 10 Ways Real Time Data Is Revolutionizing Manufacturing, brings up many relevant examples. Here is my favorite passage and example.

It’s possible today to capture item number, manufacturing number, work order details, lot numbers, date, time and additional KPIs to make traceability one of the strongest aspects of a manufacturing operation.

It’s best to consider fixed production times on the Bill of Materials (BOM) as an average or median estimate that can vary widely depending on work center assignments, parts availability and many other factors.

By having real-time data, the production time on BOMs can be fine-tuned and checked for accuracy. Without it, long-standing assumptions of fixed production times can hold an entire production line back from accomplishing more.

Today, there’s a great opportunity to have data intertwined amongst islands of data in manufacturing and engineering. Feeding Bill of Materials planning with shop floor information and providing a visibility of the BOM to others improves many processes and makes decision and planning more accurate.

However, the latter point raises the question of what tools are available in production planning, shop floor and engineering. Demand for improving internal collaboration is high. Unfortunately, the availability of such tools don’t follow their demand. It is not unique to see one big giant spreadsheet of data pulling information from different systems, combining islands of Bill of Materials data and connecting engineers in different department together.

This problem very much resonates with the mission of OpenBOM which is to keep everyone on the same BOM so it’s possible to improve communication and provide real-time data collaboration between every single person involved in the manufacturing process.

With the help of the cloud and unique real-time collaboration technologies, we developed OpenBOM to play a key role towards successful and efficient manufacturing processes. OpenBOM is a new kind of tool which relies on a new cloud based multi-tenant data management architecture that supports BOM management and inventory planning across people, organizations, and geographies.

Check out the following video to see how two people using OpenBOM collaboration between engineering and manufacturing. The most interesting part of the story is to see how manufacturing planner and engineers can work together and collaborate on the assembly planning process. At the same time, total assembly time is captured and calculated by the service for everyone.

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Conclusion. OpenBOM opens up new horizons in the way people collaborate internally in a company by helping to break down silos and islands of data and communication. The “Live BOM” collaboration model is a new way to stay on the same page (oops… BOM) with your colleagues in other departments.

What do you think? I’d be very interested to discuss this topic with you.

Best, Oleg

PS. Let’s get to know each other better. If you live in the Greater Boston area, I invite you for a coffee together (coffee is on me). If not nearby, let’s have a virtual coffee session — I will figure out how to send you a real coffee.