Picking Parts Smartly

Whether you manufacture a couple, a couple dozen, or a couple hundred different products it pays to minimize the number of parts you need to stock for production. Each part is an inventory investment and that investment needs to be as flexible as possible. If the same part can be used in six different products, it’s much easier to build that part into a products and move it out the door.

When designing new products with a Bill of Materials, Off The Shelf can help steer your towards popular parts so that you select parts that turn over quickly in inventory.

From the Product Detail screen, add a Part to the Bill of Materials.

In this example, I need to add a bolt to the BOM, but I have some flexibility in the design. The diameter of the bolt needs to be a 3/8”, but the length could be anywhere from 1-1/4” to 1-3/4” long. So I’ll search for bolts roughly the right size that we already stock (notice that my search words don’t have to be in the right order, Off The Shelf can figure it out):

In the search results, you can see the part popularity reflected in the # Products Used In column. I’ll pick the 3/8” x 1-1/4” Hex Bolt since it’s already used in 17 other products. By picking a popular part in my design, I’m streamlining future purchasing. Every time the company buys more 3/8” x 1-1/4” bolts, they can be used in nearly 20 different products. Now that’s efficient stocking, and another example of the little ways Off The Shelf can help you manufacture smarter!