Exploring color BOM structure through a car door example

Exploring color BOM structure through a car door example Consider that you are building a new car. While the car's engineering BOM tells you what parts go in the car, it does not tell you how the car will look. For example, the seat fabric type and its color, the car's exterior color and interior color, and the steering wheel texture. These visual details are defined by the color BOM, which defines the car's appearance. The color BOM is generated from the engineering BOM but specifically focuses on colors, textures, and finishes of parts that customers see. To understand how the color BOM works, we will use the car door assembly as an example. A car door is made of several parts, but only some parts contribute to its visual appeal, for example, the door handle, the outer door panel, the speaker grill, and the upper trim piece. These are the physical parts that will eventually get a specific color or appearance. These parts are known as Less Finish parts in Teamcenter. To organize all the different visual elements of the car, more than simply listing the parts is necessary. Instead, you first categorize the car's appearance in broader sections, such as the interior appearance and the exterior appearance. You can then further break down these broader sections into smaller sections, such as door appearance breakdown and seat appearance breakdown. This structured organization is known as an appearance product breakdown in Teamcenter. The car door assembly will be mapped to the door appearance breakdown. In the door appearance breakdown, you define distinct zones that will share the same color or finish. For a car door, these zones can be the door upper area, the door stitch area, and the door handle area. Each of these zones, known as an appearance area in Teamcenter, can contain one or more Less Finish parts. Next, you need to decide on the actual colors, textures, and gloss levels that can be applied to the Less Finish parts. These color options and styles are known as color appearances in Teamcenter. Now, instead of specifying colors and styles for each part, you can define a color theme, which is a collection of color appearances. For example, you can define different color themes, such as Cool Cyan, Rock Grey, and Cocoa Brown. If we select the Cocoa Brown theme, it indicates that all parts of the car must use shades from the Cocoa Brown color palette, ensuring a consistent look. Finally, once a Less Finish part is assigned a color code that belongs to a specific color theme, a color part is generated. It is no longer just a generic door assembly part, and it is now specifically a Cocoa Brown door assembly part. The color BOM is the final result, and it contains all the color parts, organized by their color appearance and color theme. The color BOM complements the engineering BOM by adding all the visual details that are required to manufacture the car exactly as designed. Engineering BOM Management ─ Usage, 2606 Unpublished work. © 2026 Siemens