The future is tomorrow’s present. Many have tried to predict it using silly or scientific methods, from chiromancy (palm reading), aleuromancy (fortune cookies), and other -mancies, to the three Ps (possible, probable, and preferable futures) and a W (or wildcard—low-probability events with a high impact on the future) used in futurology. Read the rest of this entry »

In the discrete manufacturing sector, the bill of materials (BOM) is a fundamental piece of product data that exists throughout the major stages of a product’s life cycle. According to Wikipedia, BOM is the term used to describe the raw materials, parts, subcomponents, and components needed to manufacture a finished product. Simply speaking, BOM is just a list of all materials needed to be assembled together into a product. The concept is clear and simple, and it doesn’t seem to be a difficult task to manage BOM, especially when we have a powerful tool—software—in hand. However, this is true only when the product structure is so simple that not much collaboration is needed to develop the product, when consumers are delighted to have the same products that everyone else has, and when design, engineering, and production are performed under the same roof. The truth is, during the past few decades, the landscape of the manufacturing sector has changed dramatically, and it is still changing at a rapid pace. Read the rest of this entry »