Working simultaneously on the same BOM (an example)

There is a story we often hear from users. It’s usually heard from small companies and startups that have small teams, lots of individual contributors and contractors. An engineer is working on a design, ready to start the process of buying parts. He exports a BOM in Excel and sends it to his supply chain buddy (titles don’t matter; it can be someone in procurement). In an ideal world, an engineer would be waiting until the perfect moment in which all the work is done and he can throw it over the wall to somebody who needs to order the actual parts. In the real world, however, the first design is incomplete and the engineer will send an Excel spreadsheet again and again and again. On the other side of things, the supply chain manager or whoever else is responsible for working with suppliers, catalogs and purchasing is modifying his own spreadsheets. Life is painful and complicated.

Fortunately, there is a better way. 

An engineer can change the data from a CAD assembly and a the same time, a supply chain manager can update data about that same item related to purchasing, supplier status, price and more.

The video below shows you how what I’ve just discussed can happen. I used Onshape to demonstrate the example.  However, you don’t have to. Although Onshape has a some very important differentiations when it comes to collaboration, a similar scenario can be accomplished with openBOM and any other CAD system.

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