BOM Revision Control
Every change to a recipe is recorded as a numbered revision: what changed, who changed it, when, and why. Each production order remembers the exact revision it was built to, so you can open a job from six months ago and see the recipe as it stood that day, not the one you're using now.
- Every recipe change on the record
Each edit creates a numbered revision with the date, the person who made it, and the change notes they were required to write, an append-only history nobody can quietly rewrite.
- See exactly what changed
Open any revision and the system shows the components added, removed, and changed against the one before it. No squinting at two printouts side by side.
- Jobs remember how they were built
A production order records the revision it was built to and links straight to that historical recipe, even after the live BOM has moved on several versions.
- The answer auditors ask for
"Prove this batch was built to the approved specification" stops being an afternoon in the filing cabinet and becomes two clicks from the production order.
What it does
Turns the bill of materials into a versioned document. When a BOM is created the system captures revision 1 automatically; every edit after that records a new numbered revision holding a full snapshot of the recipe at that moment, plus change notes and an effective date. A Revisions tab on the BOM lists the history with the current version badged, and opening any revision shows both the recipe as it stood and a component-level comparison against the previous one. Production orders capture the revision they were raised against, so the "as-built" recipe stays attached to the job for good.
What it replaces
The spreadsheet named "BOM_final_v4_REVISED.xlsx", the printed recipe in a lever-arch file with pencil amendments, and the engineer who is the only person who remembers why the binder changed in March. Most manufacturers can tell you what a product is made of today and have no reliable way to say what it was made of a year ago.
Who it's for
Manufacturers whose recipes genuinely change: food and beverage reformulating for cost or supply, chemical and coatings businesses adjusting concentrations, electronics and assembly shops substituting components as parts go end-of-life. It's close to mandatory in regulated environments (food safety, pharmaceutical, aerospace, automotive) where you must be able to produce the specification a given batch was built to. Businesses with genuinely static recipes can leave it switched off.
What problems it solves
- "A customer's complaining about a batch from March: what recipe was it built to?" Open the production order and click through to the exact revision. You see the recipe as it stood that day, not the current one.
- "Somebody changed the recipe and nobody knows why." Change notes are required on every edit, and each revision carries the name of the person who made it. The reason for a change lives with the change.
- "We think the quantity moved but we're not certain." The revision view marks each component as added, removed, or changed against the previous revision, so a single quantity tweak is as visible as a wholesale rewrite.
- "Our auditor wants proof the batch matched the approved spec." The as-built revision is attached to the production order permanently: the evidence is produced from the job, not reconstructed from memory.
- "We edited the BOM mid-run and lost track of what the job was actually built to." The order keeps pointing at the revision it was raised against; later edits create new revisions and leave the job's reference untouched.