Best Practices in BOM Management for Pro PCB Designers

Let's be honest, one of the biggest marketing buzzwords in electronics procurement is BOM management. Depending on who you're talking to, it means a lot of things and nothing simultaneously. How does one term become so ubiquitous and yet produce so little actionable advice?

I think the reason this happens is that managers don't implement actual processes for BOM management, and design teams don't realize they can leverage their tools to implement a real process. So, in this article, I want to break down what actually works in BOM management and state some specific goals of a BOM management process.

The (Ideal) Goals of BOM Management

Even though the term BOM management is a bit overused and vague, I think we can narrow BOM management down to three possible goals:

1. Ensure BOM has correct sourcing information
2. Point each BOM line to a library component
3. Implement a process that does this for all BOMs

Next is the question of why: we want to ensure that we can source everything quickly and quickly replace parts in the design data with suitable substitutes if needed.

For all the development that's gone into supply chain data aggregators, logistics platforms, inventory management systems, and the like, processes for supporting accuracy in BOMs still revolve around multiple platforms and even some custom software. The tools exist, but everyone seems to implement a different process, and that's especially true for individual designers.

So this begs the question, how do the pros ensure they always have correct data in the BOM? There are a few simple practices and features in EDA software that can support a highly accurate and scalable BOM management process.

Always Link Parts to the Electronics Supply Chain

For some designers, a library part is just a symbol, footprint, and a package designator as a parameter. This is definitely true for designers maintaining a library of passive components. It's quite common to see designers assign manufacturer part numbers only to integrated circuits, but not to any of the other parts that might appear in a design. And the designers that do this definitely don't add supplier part information either.

If you create components yourself, make sure to use the same manufacturer and part number identifiers in the component parameters. For example, the design below uses “Manufacturer” and “Manufacturer Part Number” to hold the basic information that can be used to lookup the component in the supply chain.

Include basic part information and supply chain information in your component parameters.

This group of designers is waiting until the design is completed to select parts for their BOM. Basically, they select components while creating their schematics, but after the design is completed, they have to select the components again before assembly!

If the library part has complete information, you eliminate a lot of double-design work. It doesn't matter whether you build your library from scratch, from vendor CAD data, or an open-source library; each library part should have:

• Manufacturer name
• Manufacturer part number
• Supplier name
• Supplier part number
• At least one footprint following IPC standards

This basic data makes it a lot easier to compile and export a BOM, as well as periodically review the BOM during the design. For a hobbyist, periodic BOM reviews are not so important, but they are extremely important when working on a larger design team. This information helps pros identify changes to the design early and minimize the time/cost impact of those changes.

Use the Right BOM Management Software

When you export a BOM from your CAD software, it's most often in Excel format, although sometimes PDFs or CSV files will be exported. Regardless of the file format, these static exports don't give you a direct link into the supply chain so that you can quickly update the BOM. If you can add a link to supplier data in your design software or through a cloud platform, it will be much easier to see required design changes based on component sourceability.

This is exactly how the pros operate: as soon as parts inventory and lifecycle updates are available, they get brought directly into the BOM so that the designer can quickly implement changes. Altium 365 is now providing this feature through the cloud inside the BOM Portal. This provides an even more advanced functionality of ActiveBOM inside Altium 365, which allows everyone on a team to spot required component changes.

The BOM Portal in Altium 365 helps PCB design teams implement best practices for BOM management in an easy-to-use cloud instance.

What's the benefit of putting all this data into the cloud? When you combine the supply chain visibility tools with the collaboration tools in Altium 365, you enable a comprehensive BOM management process that used to require third-party platforms.

• Get required parts changes before designs are finished
• Tag required parts swaps directly in schematics as comments
• Give instant visibility to supply chain managers via a simple cloud app
• Store everything in a secure repository with version control

Getting this correct relies on complete and accurate library data, so make sure to invest the time in adding manufacturer info and supplier info to your components.

By the time your team is ready to make purchases, most of the major problems that create time delays in PCB component sourcing and manufacturing will have already been addressed. Catching these problems in your BOM and your CAD data early will help your company stay on schedule and on budget. If you're ready to learn more, open up your Altium 365 workspace and give BOM Portal a try. We think you'll experience a seamless transition to a new workflow that expands your reach and capabilities.