OpenBOM SaaS reimagines PDM, PLM, and ERP with Product Data Intelligence and a Collaborative Workspace to solve data challenges
Displace TV is redefining how televisions are mounted, offering a completely wireless, vacuum-powered solution that eliminates the need for brackets, drilling, or complex installations. But behind this sleek, futuristic product was a major challenge: managing an increasingly complex design and manufacturing process.
“I did not anticipate the overall benefit of the Solidworks integration” he says. “It was a big WOW! moment. Since then the scope of what we put in OpenBOM has grown. We can control more information, specifications,and requirements. OpenBOM forces adherence to a process!”
“With OpenBOM and Onshape I can join a team, and, with a relatively small amount of capital, ramp up a CAD, PDM, and PLM lite in a very short amount of time. The benefits to the organization will be immediate.”
CanMet Design, like many other engineering and manufacturing firms, struggled with the complexity of managing product data. Their process wasn’t just about handling CAD models; it involved tracking a vast amount of additional information—labor costs, assembly steps, paint specifications, and supplier pricing.
FENCEQUIP had always prided itself on innovation. As a New Zealand-based manufacturer of post drivers, they were known for their ability to create high-quality, durable equipment. But behind the scenes, they faced a challenge that many manufacturers encounter—the disconnect between engineering and procurement.
“One thing that was attractive was the low barrier to taking us several steps further than Google sheets. We could import directly from Solidworks, an existing Google sheet, or just type in data. OpenBOM functions the way we would expect it too.” says Garrett.
Jonathan brought OpenBOM to Tomcar to improve and formalize the agreements the company has with manufacturing partners. “I absolutely love that OpenBOM lets me share accurate, complete BOMs with vendors, partners, customers, my colleagues in Israel, and so many more.”, says Jonathan. “It is great for my team and great for the company. Simply put, before OpenBOM, we did not have a final BOM that was accurate or easy to share”, he says, “We needed a full product BOM which OpenBOM delivered!”
“OpenBOM has outstanding Solidworks integration and lets us take our designs from GrabCAD straight into OpenBOM.” “We started small with OpenBOM features, and gradually grew into it. The onboarding and support from the OpenBOM team are excellent.” “The cost analysis we can do now with a reliable BOM is very important to the company and the where-used feature lets us analyze the impact of a single change across the product line. We didn’t know what we were missing, neither of these features is available in CAD BOM tools.”
“Getting our BOMs out of Solidworks in Excel was hard. We would add some non-modeled items like hardware then have to manage all those additions individually each time we updated the Excel from Solidworks”. Using OpenBOM with SolidWorks and PDMWorks is much much easier, he says. “OpenBOM easily manages and tracks our part numbers” he goes on to say, “something as simple as finding where a part is used is easy with OpenBOM’s where-used command; not having to open our CAD and look for a part is a huge time-saving.”
“I love how I can easily add a property, as many properties as I need, to manage costs and other information about Bird Gard items, our existing system just could not do that.” “For example, OpenBOM can easily manage both an item’s Manufacturer Part Number and Supplier Part Number. I just add a column for each number and another for the URL link to the vendor’s product page, it’s that easy.”
“I googled API to get data from Autodesk Fusion…. And I discovered OpenBOM.” “In minutes I was working with the free trial, clicked Support, and received a reply in less than 60 minutes. That experience gave me enormous confidence that someone was listening to me as a customer”, Mark explains. “After some more browsing of OpenBOM, we had a call with the OpenBOM team, and felt confident that they understood the manufacturing CAD business process.” “We knew we could trust OpenBOM to liberate data from our design system and bring it to our company.“
“We bought OpenBOM because we needed to bring all our FusePLM data forward to a modern system. As of now, we have completely migrated from FusePLM to OpenBOM.” With OpenBOM we can support our sales team with accurate, reliable product cost and component information.“ Prior to OpenBOM, we didn’t really know how much an assembly cost. We had the components but couldn’t track or rollup any cost information to the upper levels. When you have thousands of parts, that cost many thousands of dollars each, it is important to get that right!”
“With OpenBOM”, We can quickly create a new SKU for a customer. OpenBOM reduces cycle times by allowing us to easily reuse an existing BOM, make a few changes, and have an entirely new BOM SKU ready to go to manufacturing. For example, we recently had a requirement for a new ballast enclosure based on an existing design, we easily reused the existing OpenBOM to create the new product. The entire process to reuse a product BOM went from one hour to 5 minutes.”
“It works great! OpenBOM gives my team what they need, without the overhead of large, legacy, systems”, he adds. ”Ease of use is what OpenBOM is all about.” We don’t have an IT department; we are just engineers – OpenBOM doesn’t need an IT department.”
“As the Nexa3D products matured we soon had a BOM administrator dedicating 20 hours a week to maintaining Excel BOMs. With OpenBOM we have no single admin. OpenBOM is largely self-sufficient, no dedicated IT person is needed. It just works.” “Looking back to the decision to buy OpenBOM over two years ago it was rather simple. We needed a solution with low capital investment. SAP and Oracle were out as they require full-time admin. We were lean and agile and wanted a BOM solution that would grow with us and suited to our company. No overhead of a complicated system”. “We looked …
“The real benefit”, says Rich, “comes when we hand off a reliable, accurate BOM to our suppliers and manufacturers.” “Generating an accurate BOM has gone from a day to a few minutes.” “The visual thumbnail of each item makes it very clear to everyone involved exactly what item we are referencing in a BOM.”
“OpenBOM helps our engineering team design and maintain a cross-functional design and deliver the information needed to my (internal) customer. Before OpenBOM, we didn’t have any systems integration. After a change, many separate BOMs had to be manually updated in several places, OpenBOM took our systems process to the next level giving us an integrated process from design to manufacturing. We selected OpenBOM for many reasons, excellent Fusion 360 integration, simple and easy import, and export to leverage our legacy data, and of course, the cost and customization to meet our …
“OpenBOM is a central feature of my business that allows me to work with many different engineering tools sets, adapt to various customer requirements, and craft and maintain a variety of deliverables; all necessary to meet the needs of each specific customer. OpenBOM’s item master catalog design lets me take a database design approach to components and properties. I like how I can organize my items and BOMs in much the same way as the physical parts, by category, vendor, availability, etc. I literally use OpenBOM to master items and output a BOM exactly in the format the customer …
“I was looking for a system that could hold complex BOMs and revision, control them in a sensible way. I have a lot of experience with large, expensive, cumbersome ERPs like SAP and others, I knew these big traditional systems were not going to be a fit at my company.” “We looked at many other systems, while most contained the basic logistical features we needed, none of the alternatives focused on the hierarchical BOM and revision control that was required by our industry.” “I needed an alternative and OpenBOM fit my needs exactly.”
“OpenBOM is so much simpler than Excel. As material costs have been changing so much lately, it’s comforting to know that when I change an ingredient cost in one place, it updates in all of our product recipes.” “We love how OpenBOM rolls up the cost of all the ingredients to the top-level finished product.”
“Before buying OpenBOM, our CMs had to go to many places to find the information needed to manufacture and build our products, or we had to find it for them, a time-consuming task, especially with revisions and ECOs.” “Now, with OpenBOM, we simply add the CM to our Team and share all drawings, Multi-Level BOMs, item definitions, ECOs, specs, engineering docs, and more all through OpenBOM.” “Everyone absolutely loves the where-used operation in OpenBOM. You just can’t do a where-used operation in an Excel BOM. It is impossible.”
“When we rolled out OpenBOM we just installed it and threw a ton of data at it. I know we would have benefited from formal onboarding but we just needed to get a BOM now – and we did!” “The OpenBOM team later helped me smooth over a few rough spots in my process”, he says. “The pre and post-sales support from OpenBOM is outstanding. The team at OpenBOM are experienced engineers and manufacturing folks and it shows.” “As our process has matured we are finding even more benefits with OpenBOM. As a company, we have to be fast and flexible, we do all the work ourselves, and …
“Something we didn’t see coming with OpenBOM is the benefit to others in the company who consume engineering and BOM information. We have non-technical people using OpenBOM to better understand where a particular item is used, how many of an item exists in a sub-level BOM, or any other item usage information, all without taking time from the Engineer.” “OpenBOM is used by the entire team at Kuva Systems and saves us many hours every week in BOM and inventory management. We understand costs and gaps and our inventory in nearly real-time.” “Simply put, we have a better BOM.”
“Before OpenBOM, we managed all products in a single Google spreadsheet. We had one large document for ALL BOMs, dozens of tabs, some dupes, some tabs had several products…..” “Another file was the Item master. I had to jump from one Google doc to another to ensure correct information when making even the smallest change.” “OpenBOM brings organization and reliability to our data. It’s an interlinked system that allows changing details about one part in one place and it is updated in every BOM.” As you can imagine, a modern lighting system has a lot of parts. “We…
“We started with Excel which met our needs for a while, but later as we matured and moved towards manufacturing, it became very messy”, she explains. “Our product is compact and contains a variety of engineering and component disciplines. We have optical, mechanical, electrical, off-the-shelf components designed for manufacture both in-house and by outside suppliers,” she says. “My team took the time and looked at a lot of alternatives before selecting OpenBOM”, she explains, “from the super inexpensive to the extremely complex, OpenBOM was the right choice for us.”…
OpenBOM is a powerful cloud-based platform that integrates with your existing tools and brings product information together into a single source of truth.
OpenBOM provides fully integrated CAD, Item and BOM, production planning, vendor, and purchasing management to support PDM/PLM functions, inventory planning, procurement, contract manufacturing, and RFQ processes.
OpenBOM provides a rich set of integration with CAD, PDM, PLM, ERP, and other enterprise applications and legacy data platforms.
OpenBOM is built using flexible data architecture supporting seamless data capture from any platform, files, folder, and legacy data sources.
Whether your teams are colocated, distributed, or fully remote, OpenBOM provides an engaging, intuitive, in-person collaboration experience with multiple options for real-time or asynchronous teamwork on files, product structure, and other related information.
The data management architecture of OpenBOM is built using flexible data architecture combining out of the box data objects and fully flexible data definitions…
OpenBOM provides predefined data model to manage item catalogs, BOM, Orders, Vendors, and Purchase Order. These data objects are flexible and can be fully customized
An Inside Look At The Ins & Outs Of Doing Business With Outside Sources
OpenBOM supports a wide range of integrations with CAD, PDM, PLM, ERP, and cloud file storage systems. Check Integration Page to learn more about integrations, functions, and supported platforms.
OpenBOM supports a wide range of integrations with CAD, PDM, PLM and cloud file storage systems. Integration with ERP systems are supported as paid services based on customer requirements.
OpenBOM is a global multi-tenant digital thread SaaS platform that manages product lifecycle and connects manufacturers and their supply chain networks. OpenBOM’s modern SaaS real-time collaboration and data management technology allows the creation and management of CAD files, Parts, Bills of Materials, Vendors, and Purchases across networks of engineers, supply chain managers, and contract manufacturers. OpenBOM enables people to share and collaborate online information from the initial design through all stages of engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain. OpenBOM is headquartered in Boston, MA.
Managing product data is no longer just about locking files in a vault. Modern engineering teams work across disciplines such...
Every product starts with an idea—but to turn that idea into a real, physical thing, you need structure, coordination, and...
Let’s talk about part numbers today. Every engineering team and manufacturing company needs a clear, consistent part numbering strategy. But...
How did Abram Scientific replace spreadsheet chaos with seamless CAD and BOM integration using OpenBOM? In product development—especially in medical...
If you work in manufacturing or procurement, you already know the struggle. You need STEP files for CNC programming, PDF...
We are excited to share that OpenBOM now offers a completely revamped integration with QuickBooks, bringing your engineering, inventory, and...
A few days ago, I posted an article titled Is your data BOMable?, where I explored the readiness of your...
Let’s be honest – keeping track of accurate Bills of Materials (BOMs) is one of the biggest challenges in engineering...
Walk into any engineering office today, and you’ll see it immediately: Excel open on someone’s screen. Spreadsheets have been the...
In this era of manufacturing, customers are demanding instant gratification. This means that manufacturers have had to evolve how they work in order to satisfy their customers. To meet the needs of their customers, manufacturers need to accomplish one thing: Go from development to production quickly and efficiently.
To accomplish this goal, manufacturers need to leverage tools in order to help them. However, manufacturers are still left using Excel which creates separated data silos and requires much more back and forth with digging through folders, files, and emails looking for the right Excel.
This is why we created OpenBOM. As a system to organize product information and streamline information processes in organizations and beyond Since our inception, we have evolved and manufacturers of all sizes use OpenBOM to help them go from development to production quickly and efficiently.
OpenBOM helps manufacturers to go from development to production quickly and efficiently by allowing them to accomplish the following:
OpenBOM’s goal is to solve the problem of data management complexity and decision support for industrial companies from SMB/SME manufacturing organizations to large enterprises.
Every engineering team and manufacturing company struggles with making decisions using accurate information. Think about the product and BOM complexity from the picture below.
Think about organizational complexity working with multiple teams, contractors and suppliers.
OpenBOM brings new methods of work by introducing engineering teams, manufacturing companies, contractors and suppliers to agile product development methods.
OpenBOM Vision for AI and Product Data Intelligence
OpenBOM provides a global digital thread SaaS platform that includes elements of product data management (PDM), product lifecycle management (PLM), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) to help industrial companies to collect data, organize information, collaboration, and lifecycle management processes.
OpenBOM plays the role of an integrated PDM/PLM/ERP solution for SMB/SME organizations and provides a system of engagement and intelligence for large enterprise companies.
OpenBOM provides a digital thread support for your multi-disciplinary design digital thread by aggregating data coming from multiple design (CAD) systems and services.
The foundation of the OpenBOM platform is distributed multi-tenant data platform capable to manage product data and all related pieces of information (engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, procurement, financial, etc.)
OpenBOM is integrated with all engineering (CAD) systems and, if needed, with other PDM, PLM, and ERP systems.
The core of the platform is a flexible data model capable to manage product information, product structure (BOM), and all relationships of Bill of Materials with other systems, products, vendors, contractors, and suppliers. By doing so, OpenBOM builds a global BOM knowledge graph and uses it as a foundation of data management.
On top of a sophisticated data management platform, OpenBOM provides a very simple and intuitive user experience with the foundation using familiar spreadsheet-like editing paradigms and collaborative tools.
OpenBOM architecture is built using a modern tech stack including polyglot persistence data management, microservices, and REST API. OpenBOM is hosted on AWS but is also available on other PaaS platforms.
The power of multi-tenant architecture allows both single enterprise tenant and multi-tenant solution for supply chain and SMB/SME companies
Scaling from public cloud (AWS) to private cloud instances and government/security clouds
Why BOM is the foundation of the OpenBOM product data model? Product Structure (or Bill of Materials) is a key element of the product data model and provides an essential foundation for any data managed in OpenBOM.
The bill of materials software is something that is often considered a simple thing. After all, what can be complex in a list of parts? However, as we can see in practice, manufacturing companies are usually underestimating the complexity and fail to manage it properly. BOM engineering is a complex discipline that requires sophisticated data management and if you’re trying to avoid it, the results can be brutal and painful. The results are usually very painful and coming faster than you can think – missed components, wrong cost estimation, delayed product deliveries, and frustrated engineers and customers running around trying to figure out where is the last and most updated bills of materials. At OpenBOM, we believe in openness and simplicity as the main drivers to help companies to get up to the speed with data management science behind the Bill of Materials. It should be easy to start using OpenBOM and discover how to do it step by step. The Bill of Material is a structure representing all items needed to make a product. Depending on the product and business it includes a different level of detail about how the product is engineered, manufactured, assembled, sold, and maintained. Every engineering and manufacturing business should be concerned if parts and assemblies, as well as any other related data, are not managed properly.
Very often companies are asked – what to include in the Bill of Materials. A very simple answer to this question is EVERYTHING. The idea of not having something in a BOM is bad and to hope that you will remember what is needed is a recipe for disaster. Very often, we’ve been asked about what is a typical data set of the Bill of Materials. Here is a quick summary of what I think is absolutely essential.
Part Number: This is a unique string that identifies every single component in the product. Not all part numbers are the same. You probably heard about OEM, Manufacturing, Suppliers and many other part numbers. Those are additional pieces of information. You might not use all of them. But, to have a unique Part Number for every single item is a must to have to keep things organized. Description: It usually gives the organization a simple way to look at the details about parts and components. Used for search, simple identification Description is not unique and must not be used to reference parts for any purposes except human interaction. Part Number is used for everything else. Part Name: Names make it easier for organizations to track components. Many systems have internal names with specificity useful to Operations, Test, and Engineering teams. A separate nomenclature might be with customers in Sales organizations. Unlike part numbers, part names aren’t necessarily unique. Consistent use of part names like connector, adapter, and cable, can help keep everyone on the same page. Unit of Measure: A very important piece of information that helps to identify how to measure the quantity of the part. Type (s): Usually absorbs the different types of information to classify part of help to identify how to manage the part. Organizations can apply multiple types to classify parts and how data about part can be processed. Revision and Phase: This is used to identify the level of maturity and specific changes. Companies are using various practices when creating new part numbers of revise existing parts. In addition to these parameters, organizations are usually including information about the manufacturer, suppliers, cost, and other pieces of data in BOMs.
The information I mentioned above is usually the same about the item (part, purchased assembly). However, another group of information is typically included in BOMs and it represents a specific part usage.
A very important element of the Bill of Materials. Effectivity is usually representing specific characteristics saying if a part (or assembly) can be used and under what conditions. There are different types of effectivity – date, configuration, serial number.
Last, but not least piece of information is related to complex products having multiple configurations. A BOM that contains information about multiple configurations usually called “configured BOM” and the BOM that represents information about a single configuration is called resolved.
A list of components represented as one level is usually the basic way to plan the BOM. However, components are connected into assemblies and those usually have sub-assemblies. This is a simple single-multi-level structure. A flattened BOM is a report that summarizes the usage across multiple levels.
OpenBOM Bill of Materials core elements are represented using the Reference-Instance model and described by the following picture. You can see references (items) and their instances combined into parent-child relationships.
OpenBOM provides a super-efficient and easy-to-use user interface to view, control, and collaborates around the Bill of Materials.
OpenBOM creates and maintain a product knowledge graph that span across multiple domains – engineering, manufacturing, maintenance and support.
OpenBOM platform is different from many other existing PDM and PLM platforms. Here are 6 key differentiators of OpenBOM platform:
OpenBOM strategy and vision is to transform manufacturing company product lifecycle and operation using data. The value proposition includes removing of pain to data management and integration, collaboration and decision support.
OpenBOM solution strategy scales from New Product Development process support and extends into Decision support and future AI solutions.
OpenBOM is multi-tenant data management platform capable to provide solution to multiple companies and support tight collaboration with product structure (unlike all legacy single tenant PLM platforms)
OpenBOM is available as a multi-tenant instance on AWS via openbom.com, but can be hosted in your company AWS account using enterprise subscription. We plan to make OpenBOM available via AWS Marketplace. OpenBOM can be hosted using other hyper scalers such as GCP or Microsoft Azure.
