Background
As a new blog on bill of material management systems (BMS) an appropriate first article is explaining the difference between product lifecycle management (PLM) versus the BMS. Now, do I need to point out that BMS is not that commonly used as an acronym, and it is most often described as “BOM Management,” however, it is a type of software certainly worthy of its own acronym.
Some History
Several years ago the concept of PLM became very popular. SAP introduced a PLM “product,” that was not actually a product but simply a listing of pre-existing functionality that controlled life-cycle aspects of the product. The solution never existed and never made any sense, and gradually fell into the dustbin of failed SAP products that both no one seems to remember and no one discusses. I wrote on this topic back in 2009 and the post is listed below:
http://www.scmfocus.com/servicepartsplanning/2009/04/21/is-sap-plm-for-real/
When PLM began to become a popular term, vendors like Arena Solutions and Siemens that had software that managed the bill of material (that of course has many life-cycle attributes) adopted the term PLM for their product. This was a problem because software that manages the BOM, but controls for life-cycle and ERP systems that also have life-cycle functionality are not in the same application category, yet they both used the same terminology. This confusion persisted for years, with vendors like Arena trying to explain the terminology they had selected. Eventually, Arena simply moved away from the term to BOM management. Unfortunately there are still many BMS vendors, like Siemens that still use the term PLM.
PLM is covered in several books as can be see in the Amazon screen shot below:
However, these books do not focus on BMS systems, but more broadly on PLM, which is as it should be.
The Importance of the BMS
Meanwhile, while some companies understand the importance of a BMS, not nearly enough do. Most think that the ERP system can be the system of record for the BOM, or that no system outside of a spreadsheet is required to maintain BOM information. Contract manufacturing and the division of companies into specialized pieces (instead of having most functions under one company) have greatly increased the requirements for BOM management, but most companies are stuck in the dark ages managing their BOMs with inappropriate technology and paying a heavy price for doing so.
Conclusion
The distinction between PLM functionality and a BMS is become better understood. However, there is still a large amount of fuzzy thinking on the topic that is relevant to this topic that is published on the internet. I found a site listing bill of material management systems that listed one of my favorite vendors, Demand Works. Demand Works is an outstanding application, however, it is a demand and supply planning application, and definitely not a BMS. And this continues to be the problem. Just because and application contains a BOM, does not make it a BMS. The BMS is the system of record of BOM information and feeds things like ERP systems or planning systems with a subset of the BOM in the BMS. I will be explaining this in great detail in a future book on the topic of BMSs.
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