PCBA Tech - Why should we completely standardize the BOM in PCBA processing?

Why should we completely standardize the BOM in PCBA processing?

BOM refers to the bill of materials. Customers will be required to provide the latest BOM before PCBA processing. The BOM contains all the electronic components and other materials needed to produce this product. PCBA processing manufacturers need to purchase materials for customers based on this BOM. During production, the financial department will also calculate the production cost based on the BOM, and the manufacturing department will also regard the BOM as an important production basis. So a standardized BOM is very important.

A standardized BOM should include material codes, material names, material specifications, dosages, units, etc., so that the specifications and dosages of each material can be clearly and intuitively seen.

The BOM provided by many domestic electronic engineers lacks precise definition of the brand and manufacturer code of the material, or the manufacturer code lacks some suffixes, which causes PCBA processing plants to choose conventional series of materials by default. In many cases, the series of ICs with different suffixes may represent subtle differences in the scope of application, packaging, rated voltage and current, and packaging. This kind of non-standard BOM will cause the manufactured PCBA board to have some functional failures or failures in a specific application environment, which is extremely difficult to troubleshoot. In view of this, it is highly recommended that electronic engineers standardize extremely important information such as the brand, manufacturer code, product name description and packaging of each material. In this process, you can refer to public platforms such as Digikey and Mouser.

Because the R&D and production of electronic products are updated iteratively, and the products will be continuously upgraded and optimized. In this process, the BOM will also be updated together. Even the update of a single material will have an immeasurable impact on the product. Therefore, after each update, the old BOM must be marked as an expired document, and stored and stopped. In order to ensure the orderly management of the version and model, the release and online use of the product BOM must be issued by the R&D department, at least by the R&D engineer, The head of the R&D department approves each level to ensure the correctness of the BOM list. Then contact the PCBA processing manufacturer in time and provide the new BOM to the PCBA manufacturer to avoid the situation where the BOM is updated, but the product is still purchased and produced according to the old BOM.

Therefore, a standardized BOM is extremely important for material procurement, PCBA production, ERP system entry, and financial cost accounting.

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