There are three questions you need to be asking yourself when creating a BOM for your next project: The "when," the "what," and the "how." After discussing these topics with your selected staff and the client who has assigned the project to your organization, you can then proceed with your project.

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In this passage, we are going to provide you all the professional knowledge of PCB BOM. If you are curious about more information about PCB BOM, please check and read the content below.

Why is BOM important?

Anything that involves electronic products requires a lot of organization and operations when it comes to any materials. The purpose of a BOM is to make sure that everything involved in an electronic product project is operating smoothly. When this process is not organized correctly, a lot of unsavory things can happen.

Costs

The creation of a proper BOM can reduce the costs involved in a project. Because there are many materials necessary when it comes to a project, much money goes into them. If a BOM is accurate and organized correctly, it can save a lot of money. One of the worst things that any manufacturer can do is rush to create a BOM. If the logistics list is in a hurry, two things can happen.

First, insufficient material is ordered, and it will cost more money to get more materials contained, especially if time is of the essence, and you need the materials delivered quickly.

The second thing that can happen is that you can get too many materials, it also means spending too much money. While it is true that you will possibly have surplus materials for the next project, the amount paid exceeds the necessary amount.

Staffing and Personnel

One thing related to cost is employees and people. Having staff to work on a project is something that should be directly determined by what is contained in the BOM. If you don't take the BOM seriously, it can affect employees to hire too many people. The staff members will not be compensated the way they like or also employ a few people, and their production will suffer from being overwhelmed and overworked.

What is the 4 parts of BOM?

There can be many types of information in a PCB BOM, but the parts must have a core set of elements to start with. Here is a list of some of the more core elements that you will see in a PCB BOM:

Comment: Each part type on the Printed Circuit Board needs to have a unique identifier, or part number, listed as a comment in the bill of materials. Typically a company designated part number is used as the comment, but this is not a requirement. Vendor component part numbers or other designations can be used as instead. An example of a comment could be the company part number “27-0477-03”.

Description: This is a basic description of the part. In the case of the comment 27-0477-03 listed above, the description could be “CAP 10uF 20% 6.3V”.

Designator: Each of the individual components on the board will have its own unique reference designator. In the case of the 10uF capacitor, it could be “C27”.

Footprint: This is the name of the physical CAD footprint used by the part. For instance, C27 could be using a CAD footprint named “CAP-1206”.

How to fill a BOM?

Regardless of the particular tool used, the creation of a BOM is divided into the following common steps:

Creation of the initial version of the document, indicating on top the project name and any other useful information that allows immediate identification;

Document organization, which identifies the users who can access it and their access rights (reading, writing, creation, cancellation, etc.). It is also necessary to activate the change tracking system and set up the physical repository (with backup functionality) that will host the file;

Columns definition: each column of the spreadsheet must show on top the name that identifies the category, such as: name of the part, quantity, manufacturer, code, description and more (see Figure 1);

Rows filling: for each element belonging to the BOM, a row must be added and properly filled. Since this information is crucial for the success of the project, the information entered must be accurate and consistent with the Gerber files of the PCB;

Keep the BOM updated: once created, the file must be kept up to date, tracking every revision produced.