Hello
i dont see BOM feature mentioned anywhre besides initial configuration guide ( openboxes.bom.enabled: true ). I can not find any traces of BOM-related functions after this has been enabled. Is it some kind of obsolete feature?
Thanks
The bill of materials (BoM) feature is not obsolete. We just haven’t built any interesting features (i.e. production orders) around it in order to make it useful. The current version of the feature simply allows you to define a BoM product that is the parent of other products, along with the quantity of each component that would be required to produce 1 unit of the BoM.
I don’t have interest and/or funding from users to build a UI for production orders in the near future. But at some point soon, I was hoping to build an API resource that will allow us to create and process a simple production order.
The ideal workflow might look something like this:
- Create a new Production Order
- Choose a Workstation location
- Add a line item to the production order
- Choose a BoM definition
- Choose a Quantity
- Update production order status to Completed
- System verifies quantity available for inventory item(s)
- System transfers inventory item(s) to Workstation
- System produces the BoM inventory items in Workstation location
- Consume material inventory within Workstation location
- Record material waste within Workstation location
- Produce BoM inventory item(s) within Workstation location
- System transfers BoM inventory item(s) back to Warehouse
- Receive BoM inventory item(s) into Warehouse
- Putaway BoM inventory item(s) in appropriate location
This might be overkill, but I wanted to make sure that all production activity happens within a separate location (the Workstation might just be an internal location of the warehouse) to ensure that we have a trace of the materials throughout the process. The important transaction from the Warehouse perspective is when we have received the item back into the Warehouse, everything else should be recorded against the Workstation.
Thanks for such a detailed reply. By the provided description it will (if implemented) look and function similar to Manufacturing (with Workstations option enabled) process in Odoo/Dolibarr apps.
I forgot one step in the process. As part of the “Produce BoM inventory item(s)…” step we’ll also need to assign a serial number or lot number to the inventory item(s), so we’ll need to expose the identifier service via the API as well.
Note that this workflow represents the capabilities exposed by the API. A frontend developer will likely need to build an actual UI to allow the user to enter the inputs and perform each step.
Ideally, what I want to do is create API endpoints that facilitate integration with an actual manufacturing system, rather than us trying to build one ourselves. That way it becomes a matter of the systems knowing their responsibilities and us building interfaces between them.
It would be elegant to do this in a semi-automated way …
- Replenishment signal triggers creation of a Work Order (automated)
- Work Order is released to the warehouse (manual)
- Inventory items are picked (manual)
- Inventory items are transferred to a Workstation (manual)
- OpenBoxes signals to the manufacturing system that materials are available (automated)
— Manufacturing system takes over and does its thing — - After some period of time we’ll have an inbound stock transfer from the Workstation with our BoM inventory items (automated)
- Inventory items are received and putaway into the warehouse (manual)
That neglects some of the internals of the production process (like scrapping) that we may actually care about, but we can evolve to provide better traceability.