Bill of Material Explosion - Best Practice

[HendrikDeCuyper]

Hi, 

Pondering my head around a Supply Chain use case where a bill of material explosion is required with an undefined amount of steps to get to the lowest level.

This should be an iteration where an SKU can have a one level explosion or up until 6 levels of bill of material. 

What is the best practice of Anaplan to set this up? 

Thinking of a hierarchical way where when the iteration should stop we fill in the levels with dummy data to get the calculation to work until the lowest level.

Open for any advice!

Thanks,

Hendrik

[anirudh]

Hi Hendrik,

You can construct this as a ragged hierarchy in Anaplan. Basically, just a single list with parents as members of the same list. Each child can have a unique number of parent(s). The challenge however is that modules can only be dimensioned by the lowest members of this list.

Another possible option is to set up a module with each line item as a list member. Then create line item subsets at each unique level (so 6 line item subsets) and use COLLECT. The drawback in this option is that any new additions require manual maintenance, each new SKU would need to be added manually along with its formula

The last option I can think of is to force a balanced hierarchy by creating 6 lists for each level with dummy members at each level to serve as parents for the children that need them. The drawback here is that the number of levels should be fixed. For instance if you have 6 levels right now, adding a 7th level would require an entirely new list.

These are the only options I can think of!

Regards,
Anirudh

[Khanna]

@HendrikDeCuyper  can you clarify few assumptions, can the SKU repeat at different levels? example SKU 1.1 for four level 

[DavidSmith]

@HendrikDeCuyper 

@Khanna 

@anirudh 

Hi

I have just posted some solutions on 

https://community.anaplan.com/t5/Anaplan-Platform/BOM-Creation-in-Anaplan/m-p/42484#M4566

I'll add it here too for completeness

It is a comprehensive document; as it is a complex problem

The document covers:

• Cascading the demand from Top level to all of the sub levels
• Creating a fully exploded Composite list for All BOM levels
• Created an breakdown of the Assembly for all leaf components

I hope you all find it helpful

Cheers

David 

[HendrikDeCuyper]

Hi David,

Thanks for working this out - read through it and it is very informative.

Together with Arun Manickam, one of your solution consultants at Anaplan, we've worked out a very efficient & simple way to perform the calculation through a ragged hierarchy.

During the holiday period I'll try to take the time to write it down & post it on the community to share the knowledge.

Thanks again!