By means of BOM usage, you can manage separate bills of material for various internal organizational areas (engineering/design, production, costing, and so on).

The main differences in the BOM structure result from the different responsibilities in the various organizational areas, which all process different item data.

In Customizing for MRP, you have defined a sequence for the possible BOM usages for each plant in the IMG activity Define BOM and routing selection using the BOM selection ID.

The system first searches for a valid BOM or alternative BOM for the BOM usage with the highest priority. If the system does not find a valid BOM or alternative BOM in the selected BOM usage, then the BOM usage with the next-lowest priority is selected. The system then looks for valid BOMs for this BOM usage.