Why Most BOMs Break (and How to Fix Them)
Most consumer goods brands have a bill of materials. Very few have one that actually runs their operations.
The usual pattern:
- A product manager builds a BOM in a spreadsheet at launch.
- It’s accurate for a moment.
- Then suppliers change specs, co-mans substitute ingredients, or you reformulate.
- The spreadsheet doesn’t get updated everywhere.
Six months later:
- Purchasing is ordering from an old version.
- Costing is modeling from a different file.
- Ops isn’t sure which BOM is current.
A prettier template doesn’t solve this. The core problem is that the BOM is disconnected from the systems that depend on it.
What actually matters:
- Where the BOM lives (single source of truth vs. scattered spreadsheets)
- How it connects to procurement, inventory, and costing
- Who owns keeping it current and how changes propagate
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