A proposal bill of material or BOM represents how hardware delivered as proposal line items is produced, as a structured list of assemblies and sub-assemblies making up each end item. Each proposal line item which is produced or assembled in-house is made up from a series of assemblies and purchased materials - a single level BOM. Each sub-assembly which is manufactured in-house or at a subcontractor using components from your company, is in turn made up from more lists of purchased materials - collectively a multi-level BOM. These indented structures can be:

• Standard BOMs i.e. the same product structure and design is adopted for that part number across all contracts and bids in your company
• Proposal-specific BOMs meaning  that the line item deliverable is either new or somewhat uniquely engineered or modified for this bid.

Standard BOMs are normally maintained in your Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) toolset such as SAP or another PDM application. Proposal-specific BOMs can be maintained also in your PLM as a unique version or variant for each bid, or in this application, as explained below.

The recommended way to add a BOM to your proposal is to select the assembly or BOM header part number in the proposal LINE ITEM tab.

1. Select a product / service which is hardware and has a standard BOM or a product / service where you intend to define a proposal-specific BOM in the estimating application. You can only assign a BOM to a line item which has a valid part-number. You can select a "similar" product or service, modify the description to what it is you are actually proposing, and edit the complexity or similar-to factor
2. All line items have a delivery due date and quantity which is used to determine when material or labor costs for the final assembly will be incurred
   • The due date for this end item also determines the date when lower-level sub-assembly and component costs will occur, based on the cumulative lead-time offset or "due before" in this BOM
3. Optional items, or optional phases where all the items in that phase are optional as a block, are planned and costed separately in the consolidated material requirements list
4. To include a BOM for any line item deliverable you must check the "Cost BOM" indicator. If left unchecked only the proposal line item part code is costed. When you select a BOM WBS or check this box any standard BOMs in your PLM/SAP system are automatically imported as single or multi-level proposal-specific BOMs depending on how the proposal line item type is configured
5. To include a BOM you must also select a BOE WBS for the BOM. This is the BOE where material costing for all the components in this BOM will be estimated
6. Optionally allocate one or more WBS elements to the line item to control where in this proposal the WBS material costs will be allocated. You must select one or more WBS elements from within the BOE-WBS selected in (5). Leave blank to assign costs 100% to the BOE-WBS
   • Click on "Create WBS" in the line item popup, WBS tab, to automatically create a new WBS under the BOE with end item assigned.

Once you have added your end items to the proposal, open the BOE-WBS in the estimating application and go to the MATERIAL or PROCUREMENT & PRODUCTION tab to edit and/or import the indentured BOM structure and consolidated, costed material requirements.

1. When you first open this tab you will see the indentured BOM structure by default, with the product configuration below each proposal line item shown. Click on "view consolidated requirements" to see the costed make and buy part proposals
   • Nodes with a folder icon have BOMs underneath, as compared to nodes with a blue circle representing purchased components. Expand or collapse BOMs to view or hide the components underneath
   • The entire BOM tree structure is loaded into your computer when you open this tab, for technical reasons. Larger BOM assemblies can run to hundreds or thousands of parts and will take a few minutes to load
2. The indentured part configuration is indicated by the part-code hierarchical structure, plus a node number which represents the item and level, plus a numerical indicator of what level in the BOM this is. For example proposal line items are generally (but not always) at level 1 of the BOM
   • If you import BOMs from SAP or another PLM the nodes will initially be in the same sequence as they are in SAP etc.
   • You can drag and drop nodes within the structure to change the structure. Moving an assembly around moves its sub-components also
3. If you are viewing a standard BOM imported from SAP or PLM the "Standard BOM" column will be checked. Uncheck this box to copy the standard BOM to a proposal specific structure, as explained in the next section
   • You cannot edit quantities, lead times, complexity or other factors in a standard BOM since it is managed in SAP or PLM
   • The checkbox indicates that the BOM components below are from a standard BOM - you might still be able to edit that particular node
4. The quantity of each component in the next higher assembly (NHA) is shown and can be edited here
   • The 'Total BOM' quantity (currently a hidden column) is the: total BOM quantity of the next higher assembly x the qty in NHA for this row x (1 + any scrap usage factor which was maintained
   • The 'Quote Quantity' (which is also hidden above) is the total BOM quantity times the number of end items or proposal line items which are to be delivered
   • The 'Lead Time' comes from the product or service master - which in turn comes from the MRP lead time in SAP - and can be edited here on  a row by row basis
   • The 'Due Before' is is the cumulative lead time offset, i.e. the number of days before the final delivery of the end item this item is required. In the example above the parent assembly "SIDE PANEL" is needed 61 days prior to the end item delivery so the highlighted node - "RIVET, ALUM COUNTSUNK" needs to start being procured 61 + 55 = 116 days prior to the delivery of the end item. Costs are assumed as incurred on receipt, so any RIVET, ALUM COUNTSUNK purchasing costs will actually be counted 61 days prior to the end item delivery date
5. The unit cost is the average unit cost for all materials in this BOM (proposal specific or standard BOM proposals). It is set when you click the link to "Update & Cost Consolidated BOM" as well as anytime make or buy part proposals are edited
   • If you have multiple proposals for the same part number with different unit costs, for example to represent optional quantity discounts, the average unit cost for all these options and quantities is computed and applied to this part number at all BOM nodes
   • The unit cost will not get updated for standard BOM components
6. To search for a part within the BOM structure enter the part code or description in this box. Matching entries are displayed for you to select. On selection the BOM is both expanded to show the selected node and the system scrolls down to bring it into view
   • The total number of BOM records is displayed to the right of the search box whether expanded or not (336 BOM components in this case)
7. Click on the filter button to have the option to select fields to filter the BOM view by. Filtering the BOM view limits the display to BOM nodes matching all the filter criteria plus any higher level parent/grand-parent nodes will also be in view. You can filter the BOM on:
   • Part code or description: either select a part number from the results list or type in any part of the description and all nodes containing your text, ignoring upper/lower case, are displayed
   • Estimating method: select one or more estimating methods to limit the BOM view to specific parts. Since parent assemblies are shown limiting the view to purchased parts can be confusing since parent in-house made assemblies will also be shown
   • Level or node: enter the maximum BOM level to filter to, for example if you only want to show BOM nodes down to level 3
   • Unit cost: use this filter to only show nodes (and their parent assemblies) falling between a minimum and maximum unit cost. Make sure you have clicked on "Update & Cost Consolidated BOM" prior
   • Custom fields or tags defined in your proposal can also be filtered. You have to type in free text which matches the tag values which you have assigned to nodes of your BOM, so it is necessary to remember what tag values you have been using when filtering the BOM on tags. For example if you want to "red flag" certain BOM items create a tag called "color" with value of "red" and select "Color" as a filter option and type in "red". Red flagged BOM nodes, and their higher level assemblies, will be displayed

If the same part number appears in multiple places in the BOM there will be multiple assemblies for that part. They are treated technically as unique BOMs, which allows you to maintain attributes differently between BOMs for the same part number, such as make/buy or supply site. This is useful for example to represent making a part in the initial prototyping phase and then buying the same part in the larger volume delivery phase of the contract. Changes to component parts, quantities or lead times in one of the BOMs does not necessarily update all the proposal-specific BOMs for the same parent part number.