Introduction
Advanced bills of materials (BOMs) are a powerful tool that can be used to manage multiple bills of materials for assemblies.
There are three types records that we need to be aware of when working with BOMs:
- Assembly
- Bill of Materials
- Bill of Materials Revision
Assembly
An assembly is the item record that is the bill om materials is for. You can attach multiple bills of materials to an assembly under the Manufacturing tab.
When creating a work order for an assembly, you can select which bill of materials to use for the work order. You can check the Master Default checkbox to make this bill of materials the default bill of materials for the assembly. If you have different default bills of materials for different locations, you can check specify the locations the BOM is default for in the Default For Location field. Note you can either have the Master Default checkbox checked or the Default For Location field filled out, but not both.
Bill of Materials
Alright, so you selected a bill of materials for an assembly, but what is a bill of materials? The bill of materials field represents a certain way of constructing an assembly. On the actual BOM record, no information about the components of an assembly is stored, rather it contains some high level information about the BOM.
You can restrict the bill of materials to certain locations, and you can also restrict the bill of materials to certain assemblies.
The actual bill of materials components are stored in the bill of materials revision records.
Bill of Materials Revision
This is where the actual components of the bill of materials are stored. Each BOM can have multiple revisions but only one revision can be active at a time. The way a BOM revision is marked as active is by setting the start date to a date in the past and the end date to a date in the future. If you have only one revision for a BOM, you can just set the start date to a date in the past and leave the end date blank. If you try to create a new revision and set the start date and end date in a way that overlaps with an existing revision, NetSuite will not allow you to create the new revision.
BOM revisions are meant to represent the different changes that have been made to the BOM over time. If you want to create two active BOM revisions, you probably really want to create two different BOMs instead.
On the component list of the BOM revision most of the fields are self explanatory. The Source field is used to specify where the component is coming from. The three options are:
- Stock
- Purchase Order
- Work Order
Some of these options may not be available to you depending on your NetSuite configuration.
If you have Work Order selected, when releasing the work order, another work order will be created for the component. If you have Purchase Order selected, when releasing the work order, a purchase order will be created for the component.
Example
Let’s give an example of how this works.
At John’s Hardware Store, we have a product called the “John’s Hammer”. We manufacture this hammer in two different ways, one way is to use Iron for the head and the other way is to use Steel for the head. There are two different locations where we manufacture the hammer, at California where we use iron and at New York where we use steel. In addition, next month we are going to add some magnesium to the hammer heads we make out of steel in New York.
Here is how the records would look:
- Assembly: John’s Hammer
- Bill of Materials: Steel Hammer BOM
- Bill of Materials: Iron Hammer BOM
- Bill of Materials Revision: Steel Hammer BOM - Iron
- Bill of Materials Revision: Steel Hammer BOM - Steel
- Bill of Materials Revision: Steel Hammer BOM - Steel + Magnesium
Under the Manufacturing tab of the John’s Hammer assembly, we would have two lines, one attaching the Steel Hammer BOM for New York and one attaching the Iron Hammer BOM for California.
| Bill of Materials | Current Revision | Master Default | Default For Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steel Hammer BOM | Steel Hammer BOM - Steel | No | New York |
| Iron Hammer BOM | Iron Hammer BOM - Iron | No | California |
Note the Current Revision field is a read only field that is automatically set to the current revision of the BOM.
Here is how the BOM revisions would look like for the Steel Hammer BOM:
| Revision | Start Date | End Date |
|---|---|---|
| Steel Hammer BOM - Iron | 1/1/2023 | 4/31/2023 |
| Steel Hammer BOM - Steel | 5/1/2023 | 1/1/2024 |
Notes for Uploading BOMs using CSV Import
You can link the BOMs to an assembly by using the Multiple Files to Upload feature in the CSV import tool. I have found that it may be easier to link them manually, although it would depend on the number of BOMs you have to link.
When uploading BOMs using CSV import, you must upload the files in the following order:
- Bill of Materials
- Assembly (If you want to link the BOM to an assembly)
- Bill of Materials Revision
When populating multi-select fields, you must separate the values with a pipe character (|). This can be changed in Advanced Options
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