BOM Explorer
Search a BOM, trace where-used, get the true per-unit quantity.
→ What is this thing actually made of, where else do we use that part, and how many do we really need?
A bill of materials hides its real structure — which finished goods use a part, how deep it sits, and how many are actually needed per unit across every path.
A bill-of-materials explorer: field-qualified search across every BOM attribute, reverse where-used lookup for any component, and multi-level tree explosion — with the true per-finished-good-unit quantity rolled up across every usage path and kept separate by site.
About this tool
BOM Explorer: what it solves
A bill of materials looks simple on the surface and is tangled underneath: the same component can appear at several positions, under phantom assemblies, down different branches — each carrying a quantity that only means something relative to its direct parent. BOM Explorer makes that structure searchable. Field-qualified queries hit any attribute — material, level, procurement type, MRP controller, quantity range — a reverse where-used lookup shows every finished good a component feeds and by which path, and multi-level explosion walks the whole tree. Its signature is the true per-finished-good-unit quantity: each component quantity multiplied down its parent chain and summed across every usage path, kept separate by site because the same part can carry different quantities in different plants.
A quantity on a bill of materials only means something next to its parent
This is the thing that catches everybody, and it is why the question “how many of these do we actually need” is harder than it sounds.
A component sits under an assembly and carries a quantity of four. That four means four per one of that assembly, not four per finished unit. If the assembly goes in twice, it is eight. If that assembly sits under another one that goes in three times, it is twenty-four.
Read the number off the screen and you will be wrong by whatever the chain above it multiplies to.
The true per-unit quantity is the tool’s whole point
For any component, the tool walks every path from that component up to the finished good, multiplies the quantity at each step, and adds the paths together.
The adding matters as much as the multiplying. The same fastener can appear in four places under one finished product — different assemblies, different depths, different quantities — and the real answer is the sum of all four, not the biggest or the first one found.
It is kept separate by site. The same part can carry different quantities at different plants, because the products built there are not the same. Rolling those together would produce one number that is correct nowhere.
Where-used runs the tree backwards
Start from a component and ask which finished goods depend on it, and by which route.
That is the question asked whenever a supplier has a problem, a part goes obsolete, or a change is proposed. The answer is rarely one product and it is almost never obvious, because the paths run through assemblies nobody thinks about — including phantoms, which exist in the structure and never exist as a physical thing.
Search that hits any field, not just the part number
Material, level, procurement type, planner, quantity range. Field-qualified rather than one search box guessing at intent.
The reason is practical. “Show me every purchased component below level three under this product” is a real question somebody asks before a change goes in, and it cannot be expressed by typing a part number.
What this page is
A working demo of a tool that is built to order.
It runs on Northpoint Manufacturing, an invented company with invented products, invented part numbers and an invented structure. No real bill of materials is behind any of it.
It is one of the factory tools sold to manufacturers on the manufacturer page: built to order for one plant on its own extract, or run once for the written answer. The invented data is what lets anyone open it first.
What it will not do
It changes nothing. Read-only, by design. A structure edit belongs in the system of record with the change control that surrounds it.
It does not price anything. The tool gives you quantity per unit. Multiplying that by a cost is a costing exercise in the system that owns the costs.
It cannot tell you whether a structure is right. It reports the structure as maintained. A part that is in the wrong place will be reported accurately as being in the wrong place.
It does not reach a live system. The demo runs on a fixed export in your browser. A real deployment reads an extract on whatever schedule you set.
Built to order for your plant.
This one runs on invented data. Built to order for your plant, on your own extract, and yours outright: the code, the accounts, and a copy that runs with the internet off. Nothing is built before it is bought and there is no license to renew. A factory tool starts at $10,000 per plant. That is a floor per plant for a tool built to order on your own extract, never a quote. What yours costs is agreed before any work begins.
Or run once. The same tool on one extract of yours, and what you get is the written answer it produced rather than the tool. The audits below are that form, and each names the tool behind it.