BOM PLM Life-Cycle Parts Management Tools

Manufacturing
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I did a (quick) search and didn’t find anything really recent about this topic; So here goes.

I just did a design where I needed/wanted to find 3 or 4 part numbers for each physical part in the design. There were about a dozen schematic symbols, each with 3 or 4 possible part numbers. It was a lot of work finding those part numbers not just based on electrical parameters but also cost and availability. Each of my symbols already has a MFR/MFR PN Supplier/PN Supplier2/PN2 field. I usually use those for mouser/digikey PNs so don’t really want to change that too much.

My question for the group here is, besides a spreadsheet what “tools” (software) do you use to capture these alternate part numbers? Or, what other methods using Kicad do you use? I’m considering adding symbols to the schematic that don’t show up in the PCB but do show up in the BOM.

Below is a list of a few possibilities that I found, but I’m sure by no means is it exhaustive.

Has anyone used any of these products? Would you recommend any? Has anyone been able to “link” any of these to KiCad?

I’m a KiCad user, I have no relationship to any of these sites/products, just considering using them.

Bill of Materials ᐈ Cloud PDM, PLM, BOM, engineering and manufacturing system - OpenBOM

PartKeepr - Open Source Inventory Management
https://partkeepr.org/

Consumer Electronics | Duro

BOMIST: Parts Inventory and BOM Management Software for Electronics

Product Lifecycle Risk Management Platform & Support Services

Electronic Part Selection and BOM Management

PartsBox: Pricing

MRP software, MRP system, Manufacturing software - MRPeasy

Top Rated Cloud PLM & QMS Software Solutions | Arena

Quality Management Systems and Solutions | MasterControl

2 Likes
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PS - just found Inventree right after posting.

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we just started using inventree for this purpose and I think it does this quite well. we have a script which synchronizes the BOM from the kicad design with the corresponding inventree-assembly and from there definition of alternatives, assignment of actual parts etc. is then done in inventree.

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There is also GitPLM.

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ok, here’s two more that have come up. Anyone have any experience with either of these?

Aligni
Cloud-based software for product lifecycle and manufacturing management. -

**PDXpert **
PLM software: Simple & flexible product lifecycle management

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I am currently using OpenBOM, which works well. However, their price keeps increasing to the point where it might not make economic sense for a smaller shop.

I have been playing with InvenTree, which seems to be easy to setup and is self hosted. It also has hooks for Kicad integration. I would like to find someone that offers cloud hosting. stellarhosted.com says they do, but it’s not actually up and running yet.

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I’ve personally used Inventree with KiCad, seems to work well! Just not stable enough for work use yet (though it has been a while since I’ve tried it). If you are only using KiCad, I’d highly recommend it. KiNtree is well supported and actively developed.

Bomist is being used at work as a trial for managing parts overall rather than feeding back into the various design softwares. Very slick interface, cheap pricing, quick responses to issues (but there are a Lot of subtle issues that keep popping up).

I’ve looked at some of the other software you linked to, didn’t personally love OpenBOM or Partkeepr interfaces.

GitPLM is a great project, love the concept, couldn’t find the place in my workflow to fit it in. Maybe I’m not organized enough for it, not sure.

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I went looking for KiNtree and found Genealogy stuff :wink: I guess you meant:

GitHub - sparkmicro/Ki-nTree: Fast part creation for KiCad and InvenTree ?

1 Like
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I did! Thank you for doing the detective work. Clearly it has been a while since I used it…
I see that there is a new version out recently (and a demo video!) so I will also be taking another look for my own use.

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@scandey when you say “not stable enough for work” are you referring to Inventree or KiNtree?
also, can you describe (or show) how you use it for alternate parts? I think that’s the main thing i’m interested in. How do i have one “part” or internal-pn that has several manufacturers part numbers as alternates.
thanks,
-tim

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Aligni, by design, doesn’t permit that (at least, last I checked). They require that one internal part number maps to one MPN, and to do alternates you need to have multiple internal part numbers linked to each other. I asked them about this and it seemed like they took this stance philosophically, it’s not treated as a missing feature or something. So, I would say Aligni is not the most flexible option out there.

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I was referring to Inventree, I just had a lot of slow downs and crashes when I first used it. This was probably a year and a half ago now though so it has presumably stabilized significantly.

I didn’t get as far as putting in alternate parts, so I can’t speak to Inventree’s ability to handle that.

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