5 Reasons Why OpenBOM is Ready to Replace Excel and Spreadsheets for BOMs?

5 Reasons Why OpenBOM is Ready to Replace Excel and Spreadsheets for BOMs?
Oleg Shilovitsky
Oleg Shilovitsky
4 April, 2019 | 2 min for reading

In the world of business software, replacing spreadsheets or Excel is the most popular topic. Guess what? Almost every successful business software is doing something that people were doing and/or still doing with Excel. It is just so easy and natural to start and do Excel.

Recently, I was reading my 10-year-old Beyond PLM posts about Excel: Why Do I Like my PLM spreadsheets and PLM Excel Spreadsheet From Odes to Woes.

If you need to manage Bill of Materials and other product information, there is something better than an Excel spreadsheet. OpenBOM can do better.

Here are my 5 reasons why you need to replace your spreadsheets tomorrow:

  1. OpenBOM is simple and natural as a spreadsheet. You can use it as a spreadsheet. Add data, copy/paste, add columns, rearrange them, etc.
  2. OpenBOM is online like Google Sheets and allows you to collaborate in real time and do simultaneous BOM editing.
  3. OpenBOM reference instance model allows you to organize central storage of information about components (eg. Manufacturer, Description, Cost, etc.) and then use it in many BOMs without duplicating data.
  4. OpenBOM can manage hierarchies. All the product structure (BOM) data are hierarchical: assemblies — subassemblies — parts. OpenBOM automatically connects things in hierarchies based on part numbers.
  5. OpenBOM does rollups and calculations. You can automatically rollup quantities in multi-level structures, as well as calculate any other roll-up based on custom properties you added to BOM (eg. cost, mass, etc.).

There are many other reasons why to choose OpenBOM — it is visual, integrated with other systems, allows you to import existing legacy data, manage inventory, and many others. Watch my next blog articles.

Conclusion

OpenBOM gives you a way to simplify BOM data management almost without losing flexibility and portability of Excel spreadsheets. And it’s easy to make this move — just register for OpenBOM free user plan and start managing BOMs different in 5 minutes.

Best, Oleg

Leave Your Comment

Related Posts

Also on OpenBOM

4 6
21 July, 2022

As manufacturing companies are moving forward to discover the future of digital transformation, the question of how to make the...

26 October, 2021

Time is money. Nobody will argue with that. However, when it comes to engineering, time can be a lot of...

22 May, 2025

At OpenBOM, our mission has always been clear: empower engineers and manufacturers with modern, connected tools that simplify data management...

29 June, 2021

As I’m sure you have heard, OpenBOM is moving to a concurrent licensing model. In an earlier article, I shared...

14 May, 2025

No one wakes up in the morning and says – I need to buy some software. It is a problem...

24 June, 2021

I’m super excited to share an early preview of the new item revision mechanism we are going to introduce in...

1 October, 2019

One more quick preview of changes in the OpenBOM dashboard coming in the next release. It is related to the...

10 April, 2020

A spreadsheet was never built for PLM, BOM management, and collaboration. In a typical process of connecting engineers, contractors, production...

19 April, 2019

The manufacturing industry is changing. A long time ago, manufacturing shops were big and slow. Over the past 15-20 years,...

To the top