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Importing a Bill of Materials (BOM) file allows you to create a structure between items in Assembly Planner. The BOM shows how items (parts or components) are structured under other items (parents or assemblies). Unlike an item import, an individual part number may be repeated in the BOM multiple times, since components are often used in multiple operations. For clarification, please see the example at the bottom of this page.

Merge is the only import mode allowed for importing BOMs.  Items within the BOM will be merged, meaning that if the item already exists in Assembly Planner, the import can still be completed.  However, if the import includes a parent items that already has a BOM structure (children) in Assembly Planner, that structure will be replaced with what is in the new import file.

Notes:

•In the absence of a structured BOM file, a BOM structure can be created in Assembly Planner without doing a BOM import. Simply perform an Item import and then create the structure manually.

•Assembly Planner does not support level-based BOMs; instead, the parent of each item needs to be specified with the parent's ID. See the bottom of the page for an example of the BOM structure that Assembly Planner uses.

•The BOM that is imported is added to the default plant assigned to the user who imported the file. If a user at "Ames" does an import of 2 BOMs and then tries to run a BOM compare for those 2 BOMs at "MyPlant", the BOM will not show up in the report (even though we can see the components and the BOM structure in the component editor). Take special note if you are working in an environment where there are multiple plants in use, or if you are signed in as 'Administrator', which is an account that may not have a default plant.

The Import File

There are certain fields that must appear in the spreadsheet file used to import the BOM. The table below lists the standard fields provided in Assembly Planner relevant to this import type; each of these fields needs to be a column heading in the spreadsheet file. The fields described as not mandatory do not need to be included as columns in the sheet.

In addition to the standard fields, the import file must also have a column that matches each user-created custom field to be imported.

BOM Standard Fields

The BOM file can serve a dual purpose and also be used to import Item data. A BOM file with all of the standard fields and user-created custom fields for both the Bill of Materials and Items allows you to combine Item and BOM imports. Assembly Planner recognizes and separates the information. Note that any item that is independent of the Bill of Materials should not have a ParentID or ParentRevision in the BOM file.

 

The Bill of Materials—An example

A description of a chair assembly will help explain the concept of "Parents" and "Children". This chair has four legs, two arms, a seat and the back. The chair is the parent or end item. The legs, arms, seat and back are children under this parent. Perhaps the spreadsheet file looks something like this (fields that must be filled in shown in boldface):

*Note - Red Headers have to be filled in for import to work correctly

Assembly Planner will read this file as follows: the parent item is chair model C350, since it has no parents. The leg (part number or ID 107), the arm (ID 245), the back (ID 300) and the seat (ID 420) are all parts that go into chair C350, revision A. The quantity column does not need to be filled in, but in this case is helpful. After importing the file shown above, Assembly Planner will know that four legs, two arms and only one seat and one back are required for each chair. If this field had been left blank, the default quantity of one would be assumed.

Now suppose that the design team has made slight revisions to the back for chair C350. The changes are minor enough that the part still has ID 300. Instead, the change will be reflected by updating to revision B. In the sample file shown below, the manufacturing engineer has updated the BOM file.

*Note - Red Headers have to be filled in for import to work correctly.

Note that the old back will be used until March 14, 2010 (EffectiveToDate), which is when revision B begins being used (EffectiveFromDate). Assembly Planner will automatically update to revision B on March 14, 2010; including these dates saves the engineer from needing to manually update the change later.

When this file is imported, the item data for Item 300 will be updated and the change in the BOM reflected.