Jump Start Your Efforts With OpenBOM’s Cost Roll Ups Quick Start

Oleg Shilovitsky
Oleg Shilovitsky
10 August, 2021 | 2 min for reading
Jump Start Your Efforts With OpenBOM’s Cost Roll Ups Quick Start

I’ve never in my life have had a manufacturing company tell me that cost management is not important to them. One of the most important elemental solutions OpenBOM provides that almost all users and customers are implementing is the way to manage and calculate the cost of the product, organize the list of parts to be purchased, and validate that the right price is used for the purchase orders. 

The Problem 

Trying to calculate the rollup cost in a spreadsheet is next to impossible. I can see two major headaches when you try to do so. The first is having a single place to store and manage cost information for parts and components. The usual approach is to create a BOM in Excel (or google sheet) and pull all the information there. But then a new product (and Excel came) and you need to do it all over again. The cost information is duplicated and you’re lost in many Excel files. 

The second headache is the rollup. While BOM is structured as parts, sub-assemblies, and assemblies, the excel file is flat. To calculate cost per level and roll it bottom up is nearly impossible in spreadsheets. 

OpenBOM solves both problems using a very simple and elegant solution. To make it happen, you need to get familiar with the basic OpenBOM data management capabilities. 

Underlining OpenBOM Data Model 

OpenBOM catalog is a database of all items that manage a single source of information about the parts (including cost) and is automatically used in all BOMs. No more duplications… OpenBOM formulas provide an out-of-the-box solution to rollup values (e.g. cost) calculated between multiple BOM levels.

In the following picture, you can see how the OpenBOM data mechanism works between Catalog (Item Properties – Cost, Description, etc.), BOM (instance properties – Quantity, Calculated Cost), and connected Part numbers. 
Rollups Calculations

The following image explains the anatomy of calculations and rollup in OpenBOM. The formula mechanism calculates the totals on each level, propagates it up, multiply with the quantity and do repeats on the upper level. 

In the end you will be getting a total rollup of the cost at all levels.

Video Demo 

The following video gives you a quick five-minute demonstration on how to set up a basic roll-up formula and get the total cost of your product assembly.

Conclusion 

Rollup is a super powerful calculation feature that can be used flexibly in OpenBOM to help you calculate many properties (e.g. cost, mass, volume, etc). OpenBOM’s flexibility can be easily adapted to many different applications to make a total summary of the product characteristics. I hope this video helped you to understand OpenBOM’s underlying power. 

If you’re looking to get some hands-on experience Register for FREE to create an OpenBOM account and start your FREE 14-DAY TRIAL today. You’ll be amazed at how easily OpenBOM helps you with calculation and rollups. I bet you’ll never go back to Excel again. 

Best, Oleg 

Related Posts

Also on OpenBOM

4 6
18 February, 2025

Modern engineering and manufacturing demand speed, agility, and real-time decision-making. Yet, one of the biggest roadblocks to product efficiency and...

15 February, 2025

A few weeks ago, I was discussing an interesting trend – PLM and Data Products. The complexity of product information...

14 February, 2025

Bringing a product from design to production is a complex process that requires careful coordination between engineering, procurement, and manufacturing...

14 February, 2025

At OpenBOM, we are constantly enhancing our platform to help engineers, manufacturers, and procurement teams manage data more efficiently. One...

13 February, 2025

The importance of accessing the correct information has never been more critical than it is today. With many people in...

12 February, 2025

Managing CAD integrations across teams can be challenging, especially when individual users configure their settings differently. To simplify this process...

11 February, 2025

In Part 1 of this series, we introduced the concept of OpenBOM’s Collaborative Workspace and how it enables efficient product...

8 February, 2025

Digital transformation is forcing organizations to rethink how they manage and utilize product data. While industries have been embracing new...

7 February, 2025

First OpenBOM release from 2025 was out last week and I’m excited to share more details about what is included...

To the top