Let’s start with the basics.

What is a maintenance BoM (Bill of Material)?

In an EAM System, a maintenance BoM captures spare part information for a piece of equipment. This information is used during maintenance to determine the correct spare parts to replace. A BoM can help capture accurate parts information and generate complete, effective work orders.

Better BOMs can help you save money and increase wrench time by allowing your maintenance personnel to figure out which parts are required much quicker.

So, what can poor maintenance BOMs do to your company?

Poor maintenance BOMs can cause difficulty in identifying correct parts to plan, schedule and complete work orders.

A bad BOM will consist of complicated text descriptions of parts in the EAM system making it difficult for workers to identify and select the correct part quickly and accurately which wastes time and results in wasted time and mis-ordered parts.

Poor maintenance BOMs can also increase costs, as employees use personal spreadsheets to track parts which is inherently inefficient.

Although it may take up-front time and effort to build accurate BOMs, they are extremely beneficial.

BoMs can reduce downtime, increase wrench time, minimize mis-ordered parts and significantly reduce maintenance planning time. A typical BOM building project has a large ROI with payback in under a year.