The BOMP (Bill of Materials) often have a challenge to reconcile how engineering and production like to setup the product structure.

From the engineering point of view, they like to use phantom (non-stock parent) items as a logical module and reference them through out the BOMP product structure setup. When they need to change this logic module, they only need to change the phantom item product structure in a central place. This is much easier for them to manage. If they don't use phantom items, they will need to edit the BOM product structure item by item. So every time, if there's a change in engineering design that affect multiple similar items, it will be a lot more difficult to reflect the changes in product structure if no phantom items is used.

On the other hand, from the production point of view, they need to pick the materials for production. That include the components of the phantom items at all levels. The multiple levels nature of phantom items make it difficult for the picking and production reporting.

Therefore, an idea has come up to suggest that we should flatten the the product structure when a work order is created. Legacy work order does not have the captured bill of material capability. So this feature will only apply to material or plus work order.

In order not to affect the existing users with this new feature, we will need to add a global setup flag in Dist -> BOMP Global Control.

Flatten Phantom Items BOM Structure to Create WO?

The default value is "N". If user answer "Y", then we shall prompt for a 2nd question:

Increment Sequence for Flatten BOM Structure?

The default value is "5". User can enter value between 1 to 10. Enter 10 means user can have maximum 99 components after the blow through of phantom items. 5 means 199 components and 1 means 999 components. Each user should answer this carefully based on their own situation.

Once this feature is enabled in Global Setup, then during a creation of work order, each components is copied and re-sequenced by the above designated increment value, regardless whether there are phantom items or not. If the maximum sequence number is reached, then that's considered as an error condition, then an error should be given to the users and the work order should not be created.

By introducing this feature, the engineering can continue using their phantom items. The production will have a clean bill of materials contain no phantom items. This make the production a lot easier for picking and reporting the actual materials used. Production can use the scan/verify feature in plus work order after the phantom items removed from the WO material structure. The reporting of the actual materials used will be much simplified after the non phantom items.

In Material and Plus work order, there's a feature to compare the original BOM product structure vs. the WO product structure. This feature will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to compare. Therefore, once this feature is enabled, the comparison feature will be turned off.