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There is a misconception that BOM and Formula/Recipe are interchangeable terms and BOMs can be used in the process industry.
Pharmaceutical and food production cannot be based on a simple Bill of Material or a Bill of Quantity concept. The manufacturing is more like a recipe in which material can be adjusted within an approved method to achieve the end result.
While Bill of materials(BOM) and formulas/recipes may have similar purposes and are often confused, they are not interchangeable. A discrete manufacturing BOM will bring together the quantities of various parts, components, assemblies, raw materials and sub-assemblies necessary to produce an end product. The bill of material is fixed and does not change. Process manufacturers rely on a recipe or formula and the mixing of ingredients in order to create their finished goods. It is necessary to take into consideration the size of the order in order to make adjustments to the recipe/formula before beginning the production process, as the scaling of recipes occurs frequently.
Recipe management and scaling of batches is very important in pharmaceutical manufacturing.
How the recipe needs to be altered to compensate for a change in potency or any other specifications and its impact on the process should be inherently addressed by the ERP solution. When batch runs are scaled up or down, the batch quantity ranges and the production parameters do not necessarily follow a linear function. Users must be able to rely on their ERP application to predict finished product yields and deliver consistent results in terms of quantity and quality.
This functionality is typically not available in a standard ERPs if it was not designed to address process/ pharmaceutical manufacturing. Reconfirm with your solution provider that the ERP can re-work the quantities, ingredients and process by applying predefined formulae.
In the next post we will discuss about the Inventory of Pharmaceuticals.
