Bill of materials
list of the raw materials, sub-assemblies, intermediate assemblies, sub-components, parts, and the quantities of each needed to manufacture an end product
A bill of materials or product structure (sometimes bill of material, BOM or associated list) is a list of the raw materials, sub-assemblies, intermediate assemblies, sub-components, parts, and the quantities of each needed to manufacture an end product. A BOM may be used for communication between manufacturing partners or confined to a single manufacturing plant. A bill of materials is often tied to a production order whose issuance may generate reservations for components in the bill of materials that are in stock and requisitions for components that are not in stock.
The first hierarchical databases were developed for automating bills of materials for manufacturing organizations in the early 1960s. At present, this BOM is used as a database to identify the many parts and their codes in automobile manufacturing companies.
A BOM can also be visually represented by a product structure tree, although they are rarely used in the workplace. For example, one of them is Time-Phased Product Structure where this diagram illustrates the time needed to build or acquire the needed components to assemble the final product. For each product, the time-phased product structure shows the sequence and duration of each operation.
Structure
BOMs are of hierarchical nature, with the top level representing the finished product which may be a sub-assembly or a completed item. BOMs that describe the sub-assemblies are referred to as modular BOMs.
The public source identifies “Bill of materials” as list of the raw materials, sub-assemblies, intermediate assemblies, sub-components, parts, and the quantities of each needed to manufacture an end product. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bill, materials and list.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1322175. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bill of materials” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.