Bills of Materials (BoM)
A Bill Of Materials (or BoM) is essentially your recipe for manufacturing. It determines the input and output products that define your manufacturing process.
Tall Emu supports traditional manufacturing involving multiple input products and a singular (or multiple) output products – e.g. baking a cake or building a car. We also support singular input products being manufactured into multiple output products – e.g. a cow ‘manufactured’ into multiple cuts of meat.
For the sake of this example, we’re going to be setting up a BOM to make chocolate brownies.
Head to the Main Menu > Manufacturing > Bills of Material.
Hit the New BOM button in the top right.
We’ll start by giving this BOM a name, ensuring it is checked as Active and ensure it is checked as Adjustable. You’ll also have the option to add any notes or setup/cycle durations to provide an added level of detail. Once complete, hit Save and Close.
You can also create a new BoM by copying an existing one – either from List View on the main screen or from a record toolbar.
Copying a BoM in list view
Copying a BoM from a saved record
Either method will prompt you to choose the number of copies you want to make of the BoM.
From the list of BOMs, select the one you’ve just created. Firstly, you can choose to add production steps. Click the Production Steps tab in the action bar.
In the case of making brownies, production steps might include Measuring the Ingredients, Mixing the Ingredients, Baking the Brownies and Slicing the Brownies.
Hit the Add Production Step button in the top left and start by naming the steps, then providing further detail as required. For example, Measuring the Ingredients would be listed as a setup step, the duration is not per unit, it would require labour and it might take about 15 minutes.
Baking the brownies, on the other hand, is not a setup step, the duration is not per unit, it does not require labour, but it would require Ovens as a Resource, and it might take about 45 minutes.
Once you’ve set up your production steps you can head to the Input Products tab. This is where you’ll define the recipe ingredients.
Click the Add Input Product button and select the ingredients required to make brownies.
For this example, I’ve chosen butter, sugar, eggs, flour and cocoa powder. It’s important to note that product inputs and outputs are calculated by quantity of the inventory item, rather than measurements – i.e. instead of simply using 700g of flour we would use 1 x 700g bag of flour OR 0.7 x 1kg bags of flour.
| Recipe Measurements | Product Quantity | Input Products |
| 200g Butter | Butter (KG) | 0.2 Butter (KG) |
| 300g Sugar | Sugar (KG) | 0.3 Sugar (KG) |
| 6 Eggs | Eggs (Dozen) | 0.5 Eggs (Dozen) |
| 700g Flour | Flour (KG) | 0.7 Flour (KG) |
| 200g Cocoa Powder | Cocoa Powder (KG) | 0.2 Cocoa Powder (KG) |
Note: when you generate a Work Order using your BOM and will be working with Input Products that have batch tracking enabled, you’ll be able to specify which batches to use for your Work Order.
Once you’ve set all your input products you can head to the Output Products tab. Here you’ll be able to define the final product/recipe output.
Just hit the Add Output Product button, select your Product and select the quantity.
Note: you’ll only be able to select from the collection of products you’ve created and checked as ‘I Make This Product’.
In a similar manner to the input products, the quantity of your output product will depend on how you sell it. For example, if you sell the brownie in bulk (i.e. sell the entire 2kg brownie as a singular product) you would set the output product as Brownie (2kg) at a quantity of 1. However, if you sell the brownies individually in 100g bites you might set the output product as Brownie (100g) and a quantity of 20.
You can specify whether or not your BOM can be adjusted when it is used in a work order e.g. in the event that you ran out of an ingredient contained in your BOM when you are generating a Work Order, you can substitute items or adjust quantities before you start production.
If you have not selected Adjustable on your BOM, you will not be able to modify your input or output products, production steps or resources in a Work Order.
Adjustable field on a BOM
CRM will calculate the total cost of creating an Output Product by multiplying the Quantity and Cost Price for each Input Product and totalling this to display the Total Cost.
You can push the Total Cost figure to update the Product record for your Output Product by clicking on the Update Product Cost Price button – the system will then update the Cost Price field for the Product by dividing the Total Cost figure by the Quantity of Output Items the BoM will create.
In the example below, I have a BoM that will create 20 Bakehouse Fudge Brownies at a Total Cost of $5.50. When I press the Update Product Cost Price button, the Cost Price field in the Product for Bakehouse Fudge Brownies is updated to $0.275 i.e. $5.50/20 = $0.275.
Now you’ve successfully set up your BOM, to turn your raw materials into finished product you’ll need to run a Work Order – click to continue.
