Why is Bill of Material Accuracy important?

 A bill of materials is a file listing of all the parts that go into a product, if you are baking a cake it is the list of ingredients and quantities that are required to make the completed cake. It does not include the cooking instructions; these are included in the routing file, which tells you how to mix the ingredients and how to bake the cake.

 The Bill of Materials is essential for many reasons, it is required by people in the warehouse to make sure that the right parts are pulled in the right quantities for production. The Bill of Materials is required by assembly to make sure that all the parts are included in the finished product. It is required for accounting to make sure that every part is charged to the finished product. It is required for dealers and boat owners whenever they do boat maintenance or need to replace parts. It is a very important file for many reasons.

 Product Design creates the initial bill of material when they come up with the idea for a new boat. This bill gets adjusted when the boat goes through the first stages of development and as the first boat of the new model is produced. It can also get adjusted at any time over the life of the boat, as people come up with new ideas, and changes to the initial product design.

 The accuracy of this file is important because any error could potentially have very serious consequences, Imagine buying a boat from a supplier who forgot that they needed to put a steering wheel on the boat. It is only one item missing from the Bill of Materials, and there may be hundreds of components on the boat, so when you look at it from the number of errors the bill is over 99% correct, but if you look at it from the customers perspective it is 100% wrong.

 Companies should make sure bills of material are 100% correct from the customers perspective. If you spot any errors, bring them to management for resolution. You cannot have too much accuracy!