OpenBOM™ for Construction and Manufacturing
Digital Transformation is coming to both manufacturing and construction industries. It means changing the old fashion processes and replacing them with a new modern way to work, which can provide the answer for today’s challenges of work in a global environment with high demands from customers and increased global competition. Manufacturing and construction companies are different, but they are on the collision course and modern manufacturing and product development methods adopted in manufacturing for the last few decades are making progress in AEC and can benefits many construction companies and contractors. At the same time, manufacturing companies are facing the demand for mass customization and global diversity. As a result, manufacturing and product development methods needs to be improved to support global supply chain and competition.
Manufacturing companies are under increasing pressure to attract new customers and develop new products fast. You may think, money and resources are enough to make it happen, but you would be mistaken. When it comes to new product development, companies rely on established business software that helps optimize for complexity and structured process. Unfortunately, many companies keep relying on outdated software that results in a breakdown of collaboration which ends up costing them BIG!
Construction projects include a wide array of organizations operating together on the same project (eg. apartment building, hospital, hotel, bridge, etc.), and good project management is an essential part of making engineers and everyone else involved in the project work efficiently and safely.
Both manufacturing and construction companies are under a substantial amount of pressure to deliver the results on time and within budget and to stay ahead of the competition game with global product development, global competition, and with substantial risks in the modern environment.
When you are talking big scale construction projects you usually come across 2 main problems that if not handled correctly can lead to a negative impact on the job site.
- Communication
- Data Management
The general problem for both manufacturing teams and construction companies involved in the distributed and diverse value chain are messy communication and the need to keep up with multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary data.
Even all players of construction project are working together on the same physical site, multiple companies involved into the project activities need to have an efficient way to communicate instead of exchange information using old fashioned spreadsheets, local databases and emails.
A very much similar problem is happening in manufacturing where even exceedingly small companies are connected with multiple contractors and suppliers globally. The time when manufacturing companies were making products in one building are gone. Now, everything is distributed.
It is All About Data Management & Communication
Data management and team collaboration are in the center of innovation for large companies when it comes to the team’s new product development (NPD) processes and innovation units. Think about a startup inside a large company. On one side, you have almost unlimited resources of the large mothership. On the other side, you need to run the product development process and innovate faster, because you basically run against the time.
Although many companies adopted remote communication tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams to improve communication, when it comes to the product data, these communication tools provided extraordinarily little help. The data, the most important element of the new product development is managed using Excels and shared using Emails, which creates a huge burden on the process.
Manufacturing Companies Challenges
When you think about a typical manufacturing process, the following set of challenges are on the top of the mind of thousands of small and medium-sized manufacturing companies.
- No product records, data in Excels/ Files.
- Disconnected PLM, exceptionally large ERP, transaction systems.
- Teams, suppliers, contractors are disconnected, communicate by emails.
- Zero intelligence about how to find the right components, suppliers, or contractors. Most of the systems are transactional inside companies.
The situation in large manufacturing OEM is different but not less stressful. The innovation delivery pressure is at the core of the main concerns of large Fortune 500 enterprises. One of OpenBOMs customers, a global consumer electronics enterprise (Fortune 500) has a new product development unit, which was running into the same problems I was just describing. The existing legacy PLM environment is too complex and too costly, cannot deliver an easy model to collaborate, and fails to provide an agile environment for production planning, which is typically handled by a super sophisticated corporate ERP system.
Construction Projects Challenges
We have been working with construction companies working in prefabrication space, trade contractors working on HVAC, electrical and other equipment project and found the challenges of communication. Contractors must communicate using wide range of information coming from different places (general contractor, manufacturing reps and manufacturers, etc.). There is no place to manage holistic information about the projects to present all structured information about the product. There is no simple way to purchase equipment and communicate with manufacturers and manufacturer representatives.
These are challenges we captured faced by contractors when it comes to the management of project information in the holistic way.
- Organize project assets in the structured way using BOM tools.
- Organize manufacturing catalogs and product options.
- To provide a visibility about all components of the “construction objects”.
- Track purchases and deliveries.
- To make cost estimation based on BOMs and approved materials.
- To track approvals of customers on materials and components
- To manage procurement process of equipment, components, and material?
- Track material and component levels between projects.
How OpenBOM Can Help?
OpenBOM is an intelligent network-based global collaboration platform that helps you to manage product information and connect manufacturing companies, contractors, suppliers, and everyone involved into a single holistic information system and process.
This is how OpenBOM works:
- Create a global, secured, collaborative network for companies, suppliers, and contractors capable to manage product information and connects data and companies.
- Use multi-tenant data architecture, integration with engineering tools and unique user experience to scale from exceedingly small engineers and contractors to large manufacturing and AEC companies.
- Build intelligence based using product data and network of manufacturers, suppliers, and contractors.
OpenBOM combines several incredibly unique data management features, combined with simplicity and ubiquitous access to information and instant data sharing providing an environment in which everyone has access to the data he/she needs.
OpenBOM seamless integration with engineering tools (CAD, PDM, ERP) provides an easy way to extract data and merge multiple sources of information together.
Global access and collaboration allow to multiple users, teams and companies to work together and streamline processes and connect people and information into a single value chain.
We just starting to expand the work we do with AEC projects and construction companies. Lean more about our vision of connected value chain using OpenBOM SaaS applications. You can learn more about it on our AEC website - aecbom.com
Where To Learn More About OpenBOM™ ?
You can learn what OpenBOM does online via our website, online training, blog and YouTube channel and social media. and by contacting us via email oleg@openbom.com.
