Link: http://www.etc-architect.com/?p=146
From ETC-Architect » IT Architect Global | Software Architect, Global | IT Architect, Global
When constructing any architecture that builds on product or services that go beyond a simple definition we entering the construct of a Bill of Material or a BOM. There are still many people that think of a BOM as a purely physical representation of materials, but this is mainly because they lack of the ability to abstract. The most fundamental example of a BOM is that of a bicycle where you got many parts that form a bicycle divided into own BOMs that make up a subcomponent such as a gear mechanism. For more complex products such as cars this sub division is usually layered in in a much great depth. The BOM however is also used for the engineering where many then talk of an engineering BOM that describes the assembly tasks required to make a full product out of the many parts. Additional there is often also often a tool BOM that will describe the tools required for each step of the engineering BOM, their configuration and time required with the particular tool.In the same way you will often also find other BOMs often customised for a particular area such as testing. In production planning all these BOM are then used to execute.
The important part of BOMs is that they are most efficient on products and services that are produced or performed many times. All BOMs are hierarchal of nature and can be combined with each other. The architecture of BOM building can be found in all kind of areas, such as with services that look similar to an engineering BOM or with non physical products. An example of such a non physical product could be a simple commodity swap that you will model by using different underlying properties such as currencies, financial or physical clearing information as described in this site http://www.fpml.org/spec/fpml-5-3-6-rec-1/html/confirmation/fpml-5-3-intro-16.html. Here you will see that the commodity swap is build as a BOM consisting of many sub BOMs that than later are reduced for other other products. An example would to use the sub BOM of a coal leg description from a coal swap and reusing it as an building block of a coal forward. With a bit of creativity you should be able to expand the concept of a BOM into your area.
Now a really interesting thing happens when BOMs are used in business architecture as they often replace the classical business process modelling in terms of using a kind of engineering BOM. The clear advantage over traditional BPM is that you can build a business process bottom up. So you use sub component BOMs optimised in their specific area and add them together to a bigger picture. Given that all the BOMs are hierarchal in nature this works often much better than the traditional relational approach. Also business process improvement can be much better localised and reused in other areas that contain the same sub BOM. Another advantage of these hierarchal objects is that the different kind of BOMs are easy to combine with each other, so that if you have modelled a complex service you can create a resource BOM, a QA BOM, a Cost Reporting BOM, etc. that will nicely fit to the service BOM, but can be used to only contain a part of the overall information. An example is that when you create an engineering BOM for a car you can create a HR BOM that reflects all the human resource requirements of the engineering BOM. Once created you than take the HR BOM away from the engineering BOM and the HR people will then be able to construct a demand plan for engineering with the engineering knowledge.
Just at the end a word of warning not to discuss BOMs loud in public places as two architects did it in late 2001 at a big international airport that lead to them spending some time in detention as the phrase “Building a BOM” is too similar to a plan of terrorism.
