Bills of Material in Production Planning 
Bills of Material in Production Planning
Production Planning in the SAP R/3 System
The Production Planning application component provides a solution for both the production plan (type and quantity of the products) and the production process. Preparations for production include the procurement, storage, and transportation of materials and intermediate products.
Bills of Material in Production Planning
Bills of material (BOMs) and routings contain essential master data for integrated materials management and production control. In the design department, a new product is designed such that it is suitable for production and for its intended purpose. The result of this product phase is drawings and a list of all the parts required to produce the product. This list is the bill of material.
German standard (DIN) number 199, part 2, number 51, defines a bill of material as follows:
A bill of material is a complete, formally structured list of the components that make up a product or assembly. The list contains the object number of each component, together with the quantity and unit of measure.
A bill of material can only refer to a quantity of at least 1 of an object.
The graphic below shows some components of a bicycle that are included in a BOM.
Bills of material are used in their different forms in various situations where a finished product is assembled from several component parts or materials. Depending on the industry sector, they may also be called recipes or lists of ingredients. The structure of the product determines whether the bill of material is simple or very complex.