Yepp, the As maintained BOM is an "OLM thing" too...

Collaboration is present across the whole product life cycle, but no aspect of the product structure states “-we are in this together” as clearly as the As maintained BOM does in the service life cycle. The As maintained BOM both enables and represents the effect of choices and actions made between several stakeholders, across time and space.

While capturing the As built BOM relies on activities that are under internal control and by tradition  runs close to the core of the company, capturing the As maintained BOM is a challenge that requires gathering data from operations that are performed at physical distance and outside the own company. Service and maintenance might be executed under direct company control but also and, perhaps more often, by contracted partners or actors with no formal relation to the company at all.

The distributed nature of service and maintenance is reflected in the structures used in the digital information flow. Information needs to be made available and captured in situations that range from being under 100% control to situations “at the edge” with little or no control at all.

The As built BOM is created in a fully controlled state. The company can dictate format, level of detail and data capture points. Processes and systems interacting to produce the final As built BOM can be digitally connected and execute with 100% adherence to configuration and manufacturing standards at relative ease due to systems and standards being under direct company governance. Given the high level of control, the As built BOM can be expected to be complete, structured digital representation in a consistent format.

In some situations, the As maintained BOM will also be created in a fully controlled state. That full control comes at an effort and cost. In many cases, that effort and cost will be balanced against the real need/benefit. The cost and effort of maintain a perfect, digital As maintained BOM is not always in balance with the business value of doing so. A less than perfect digital As maintained BOM will be sufficient to meet customer requirements, legal compliance and exploration of business opportunities.

The As built BOM can be captured at very distinct points in production. A product might be compiled from assemblies that where manufactured at different times and places but each of them has passed through the same MAKE pattern offering the same opportunity capture formal records both for the materials used and for the route/process applied to them. There is always a point where digital records can be taken of the process applied and the material used. Those records can later be incorporated when the object is used to build other objects. In the end there will be a 100% As-built view of the final product

Theoretically, it should be possible to capture the As maintained view with the same consistency and accuracy as the As built view. Unfortunately, due to the distributed nature of service work, what is theoretically possible is not always easy to achieve in pragmatic reality.

The first challenge is to find/provide the starting point for the As maintained BOM. Service & maintenance might be executed by several stakeholders with varying level of closeness to the company core. Given that wide distribution of responsibility, the digital starting point might not look the same and be available in the same format for all. Data might not be distributed in the same level of detail and same format to each actor on the chain. System clients and their user interfaces might be different depending on the actor’s role and closeness to the company core.

The second challenge is that the As maintained BOM is not only the result of adding and/or subtracting parts that are fully defined by the own company. It is also the result of adding objects from outside the own company core, objects that might be known and understood from a human perception point of view but that are not present as formally defined parts in the own product domain. The As maintained also includes consumables falling outside the traditional BOM structure.

Consider an example as gear house oil. It′s not a part in the BOM structure. It doesn′t fit into the group “other objects” either. It is a consumable that is very important from maintenance point of view, but it is not a part in terms of being something the product is built from. The As maintained BOM also has a context in terms of activities that have been performed on the product instance. Those activities could be expressed in a complete bill of process but are rarely logged in that formal manner from the service edge. They are more likely to be logged in documents as free text or as selection from predefined options and likely to be described from the perspective of billing rather than the perspective of execution.

So, what does the challenges of the As maintained BOM imply when building the digital thread for service lifecycle management?

Digitalizing the As maintained BOM requires establishing capabilities that allows for creating and updating the structure from many locations by many stakeholders with varying access, insight and interest in/into the core digital flows of the company. Digitalizing the As maintained BOM also requires capturing accompanying objects like documents and components defined outside the part structure governed by the core company.

People working at the edge of the ecosystem need to perform qualified information processing, accessing and providing information at ease and at significant level of detail. As always with challenging tasks, they can be addressed according to two philosophies: 1) Train people to deal with complexity or 2) Guide people when they face complexity. One doesn′t exclude the other but as the amount of available information increases, number of possible combinations skyrockets and the community of stakeholders in expanding ecosystems grows, training simply will not be enough. Systems must provide digital, guided assistance.   

And guess what…. It′s all about OLM, Object Lifecycle Management. The key to digital guided assistance in service lifecycle management is structured PLM practices under a strong configuration standard and a well-defined IT landscape working together around a shared object model for the product instance and the document twin. Objects working together, enabling consistent digital threads across value chains 

Just thinking….