Webinar Recording: BOM Types, Which One Is Good For You?

Oleg Shilovitsky
Oleg Shilovitsky
23 January, 2020 | 2 min for reading
Webinar Recording: BOM Types, Which One Is Good For You?

Going back to basics in today’s webinar and talk about the fundamental things – BOM types. Often there are tons of confusion around BOM types – EBOM, MBOM, XBOM, SBOM… you name it. We don’t talk about them today. We will do it later.

Today, we talk about 4 fundamental types of Bill of Materials

1- Single level BOM.

This is the basic and the simplest BOM – list of parts. No structure. Think about the list of components you need to build a product. Usually, the most commonly used because of its natural simplicity. 

2- Multi-level BOM (indented BOM).

This BOM presents structure and parent-child relationships. This one is a complete structure of components – parts and assemblies. It can be two types – quantity-based and instance-based. Quantity based means no part can be present multiple times in the same level. So, an instance is not identified – only quantity. Instance BOM allows to every single part instance to be represented in the BOM

3- Part List.

A flat list with a list of all parts and corresponding quantities. It is a quantity summary.

4- Flattened BOM.

A quantity-based rollup built from a specific top-level BOM. Flattened BOM contains both assemblies and parts, but very much similar to the part list that contains only parts. 

Check the video from the webinar 

And this is a slide deck.

Conclusion.

The information about the product can be presented in various forms. BOM types cover fundamental options – single-level BOM, multi-level BOM, flattened BOM and part list. Knowing these BOM types you can feel very comfortable speaking about different product structures. 

In the next webinar, we will talk about configured BOMs, Resolved BOMs and Views.

Register for OpenBOM user subscription later today 

Best, Oleg @ openbom dot com.

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

Read OpenBOM customer reviews on G2 Crowd to learn what customers are saying about OpenBOM. 

Related Posts

Also on OpenBOM

4 6
20 February, 2026

Let’s speak about how to turn BOM structure, change history and dependencies into product memory to support intelligent decisions.  Earlier...

19 February, 2026

Do you remember when we paid extra for international and long-distance calls? That model eventually disappeared because technology changed. Pricing...

18 February, 2026

Product development is accelerating and product complexity kills traditional system architecture. Yesterday, my attention was caught by Martin Eigner’s article...

17 February, 2026

A few weeks ago, I participated in a webcast about the future of BOM management with Michael Finocchiaro, Patrick Hillberg...

16 February, 2026

A few months ago, I ordered an electric kettle, and to my surprise, it came with a Wi-Fi card and...

13 February, 2026

A few weeks ago, Martin Eigner published a thoughtful post discussing a deceptively simple question: Is a CAD model the...

12 February, 2026

Most teams do not fail because they lack data. They fail because the human part of the data is missing....

11 February, 2026

When teams begin a new hardware project, one of the most common assumptions I hear is this: we don’t need...

10 February, 2026

A Complete Guide to Managing CAD, BOM, Procurement, and ERP Data Getting started with product data management is rarely a...

To the top