There is a longstanding Lifecycle Unification problem relating to Bills of Material, known in Industrial Engineering circles as the multiple BOM reconciliation problem.
The difficulty is this: any reasonably complex system has not one, but several BOMs, each representing a distinct configuration of the system across its lifecycle (e.g. as-required, as-specified, as-designed, as-built, as-used, as-maintained etc.). These BOMs differ from each other both in structure and in the number and kinds of parts that comprise them.
Identifying and propagating the consequences of even a single modification to one feature of one component in one BOM, to its counterparts in other BOMs for the same system, requires the coordinated expertise of a team of people that span several speciality disciplines such as process, mechanical, instrumentation and software engineering, not to mention quality assurance.
Sound familiar?
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