OpenBOM 101 – Flattened BOM

Oleg Shilovitsky
Oleg Shilovitsky
19 May, 2019 | 2 min for reading
OpenBOM 101 – Flattened BOM

To manage parent-child relationships is a fundamental function in the Bill of Materials. OpenBOM does it on demand by connecting Part Numbers. It is a very useful function that can apply in many situations. You can think about complex structure, order or anything like this.

While Multi-level BOM is a structure, you can think of a flattened BOM as a list of all the parts from all levels of your BOM listed together and the aggregate total quantities for each part are shown. It’s a great way to see the quantities of ALL Parts (no matter what level of the BOM they appear) with their summed quantities.

Flattened really only makes sense for a multi-level BOM. The following picture can give you an idea about what is flattened BOM:

Think about simple skateboard combined of board, screws, axle, wheels and more screws. Altogether, you can see them organized in an assembly (Skateboard) and subassembly (Axle Assy). However, when you get to a single-level BOM, you will see only one level including Parts and next level assemblies. The purpose of the Flattened BOM type is to display a flat representation of your BOM with distinct components and corresponding quantities collected from all sub-levels of a specific assembly.

The following video gives you a very short demo of flattened BOM in OpenBOM

Conclusion

OpenBOM Flattened BOM is an out-of-the-box quantity roll-up mechanism that can be used practically in any BOM structure. OpenBOM creates parent-child relationships on demand by connecting BOMs using Part Numbers (ID). Note- it CAD integrations it is the file name. By using Flattened BOM, you can get a summary of parts and their quantities in ANY product structure.

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.

Want to learn more about PLM? Check out my Beyond PLM blog and PLM Book website

Related Posts

Also on OpenBOM

4 6
15 July, 2025

How did Abrams Scientific replace spreadsheet chaos with seamless CAD and BOM integration using OpenBOM?  In product development—especially in medical...

11 July, 2025

If you work in manufacturing or procurement, you already know the struggle. You need STEP files for CNC programming, PDF...

10 July, 2025

We are excited to share that OpenBOM now offers a completely revamped integration with QuickBooks, bringing your engineering, inventory, and...

9 July, 2025

A few days ago, I posted an article titled Is your data BOMable?, where I explored the readiness of your...

8 July, 2025

Let’s be honest – keeping track of accurate Bills of Materials (BOMs) is one of the biggest challenges in engineering...

3 July, 2025

Walk into any engineering office today, and you’ll see it immediately: Excel open on someone’s screen. Spreadsheets have been the...

2 July, 2025

Engineers rarely build entirely new products from scratch. Whether designing machinery, electronics, or high-tech projects, most products are evolutions of...

1 July, 2025

At OpenBOM, our vision has always been clear – to create an open and flexible information model, built using modern...

30 June, 2025

At OpenBOM, we know that managing changes is one of the most critical – and often challenging – aspects of...

To the top