Integration of evolutional BOMs for design of ship outfitting equipment

PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) as well as enterprise information systems commonly use the BOM (Bill of Material) as a means of communication during product development. BOM has been used for product design, production scheduling, procurement, manufacturing and maintenance as it contains the part list of a subassembly or assembly product. BOM currently plays a key role in the PLM environment because it is an essential product information platform in the industry. In practice, product data should be arranged based on the BOM and product structure. Many shipyards or PLM vendors have attempted to develop a PLM adequate for shipbuilding. However, it is always the premise of the successful PLM implementation to prepare the efficient product structure and BOM.This paper suggests an enterprise BOM which addresses the hierarchy of parts and assembly, product structure and product information of outfitting equipment in marine vessel design. In order to express the evolution of product structures and outfitting information during the ship design, the enterprise BOM is modeled by the structure BOM and the display BOM. Concepts are developed for modeling all levels of product relations with a uniform set of relationships supported by the enterprise BOM. It is shown that the architecture of the structure BOM can be used to define the relationships between assemblies, parts, and a multi-view of an evolutional BOM in ship design. The architecture of the outfitting BOM is also presented using an example of a piping system.

► We suggest an enterprise BOM for outfitting equipment in marine vessel.
► The enterprise BOM is composed of a structure BOM and a display BOM.
► The evolution of the BOMs is modeled by an identification code.
► Entity–Relationship model of the enterprise BOM is defined to integrate the product information.
► A prototype of the enterprise BOM is also implemented.