Managing BOM and component availability

[joniengr081]

A hardware design having more then 100 different components in the schematic and PCB design, how can we manage the bill of material (BOM) and the component availability in efficient manner. The cost of components can be changed, the lead time can be changed. Is there any tool that can help in managing the BOM ?

[Uky]

Coming from Cadence, at least that vendor offers licensing alternativs that includes functionality
such as internet connected search and place for parts from some major component distributors in data base wiews
that in many cases includes schematic symbols as well as footprints. What you get is a schematic complete
with values, distributor part numbers, manufacturer part numbers, etc. that can be processed to nicely formatted BOM's.

I think that availability will be displayed at time of selection but no guarantees for the days or weeks to follow though.

I am not always impressed with the "free" footprints but they can be downloaded and modified
according to user preferences.

I have not checked but i would not be surprized if other tools offers similar functionality.

[joniengr081]

The PCB deign tool which I am using has the possibility to generate BOM in which part numbers, quantities, part name and description are shown in addition to supplier part name.


How do we check in efficient way if the parts in BOM still available in enough quantity and the total price of all the parts ? One option is to check manually. This may take several hours. Do we have any quick mechanism ?

[SiliconWizard]

Depends on what you call availability. If you restrict it to one or just a couple distributors, then it's doable, many now have a BOM tool that allows you to check prices and availability of a whole BOM by just uploading it (in their format, all you need is a way to export or transform BOMs in their required format). Doing it across many distributors is still a pain. There are online services that can do that, like Octopart, although I tend not to trust them a whole lot.

You can try for yourself though: https://octopart.com/bom-tool

[Feynman]

That's something an EMS can take care of usually.

[Doctorandus_P]

You have not mentioned which software you are using.
That is important information (and also hardly a secret worth keeping). Each EDA suite has it's own way of implementing BOM tools. And these vary from simple scripts to extract a list of parts, to a complete database that can automatically substitute compatible parts from different vendors and create ordering information with a few mouse clicks.

Hobbyists who occasionally do some projects tend to prefer a simple list, while for companies who manage a lot of projects it is worthwhile to set up a database and improve efficiency though automation.

In general you have to set up such a database yourself, but I think there are exceptions. For example, I think that Easy Eda (which is "free to use" but not "Open Source / FOSS" has an integrated database, but only for parts ordered from JLC. If that is so, you probably pay for that software through a markup on the parts you order.

It's a bit like those programs that are "free" but are not able to generate Gerber or other artwork output. You can only order PCB's made from some specific manurefacturer.