The R/3 System supports two technical types of BOM to represent similar product variants and production alternatives:
A variant BOM groups together several BOMs that describe
different objects (for example, products) with a high proportion of identical parts.A variant BOM describes the specific product variant for each product, with all its components and assemblies.
A multiple BOM groups together several BOMs that describe
one object (for example, a product) with different combinations of materials for different processing methods.The system does not define the technical type until you create either an additional alternative for a BOM or a different variant for an existing BOM.
If you already know which technical type you want when you create a BOM, you can define the technical type using a special function (see