SAP has never recognized this legitimate need in BOMs. There are multiple reasons why they should allow quantity zero:
Reasons Why You Need Qty 0 in BOMs
1. A/R Materials (As Required): Lubricants or Adhesives required to build a product are not rationed out by the drop, or by the bottle, but left to the assembler to determine the appropriate quantity based on SOE instructions. On the drawings, Engineers will call out A/R (as required) in the qty box.
2. Variable qty items: Shims or trimmer balance weights are issued as one each, but cannot be determined until the assembly of the product occurs. As appropriate, differing quantities are issued to the product to fit the need for the specific machine being built.
3. REF Materials. Quite often, assembly drawings will need to show the mating interface with other parts of the machine which are not actually part of the assembly. In this case, we would show the interface as u201CREFu201D on one assembly, but as quantity u201C1u201D on another assembly.
4. Tooling: Tooling needs to be tracked and linked to the assemblies that it is used on. But it does not get consumed on a one-for-one basis with the assembly. So we want to use SAP where-used capability by linking each tool within each BOM where it is relevant, but show the quantity as u201C0u201D. On the drawing tooling is called out as REF.
5. Must Choose Optional Choices: On u201Cassemble-to-orderu201D products, one of several different choices may be needed for various parts of the machine configuration. These u201Cmust chooseu201D options are items where the machine will not be functional without one of the available choices (such as three choices of tires on a car. The way these options are handled on the drawings is by showing them with Alpha characters in the quantity field where you u201Cmust chooseu201D one of the u201CAu201D items, one of the u201CBu201D items, and one of the u201CCu201D items to have a fully configured, workable machine. On the BOMs, we call out all the choices as qty 0, with a note to refer to the customer sales order for which choice has been made.
6. May Choose Optional Choices: On u201Cassemble-to-orderu201D products, in the case where an option is a u201Cmay chooseu201D option you may either order or the option or not; the machine will operate fine either way. In this case the option would show on the drawing with an u201C*u201D in the quantity field and on the SAP BOM, you would call out quantity u201C0u201D with a note to refer to the customer sales order for which choice has been made.
7. Acceptable Substitute Items: In some cases two interchangeable part numbers may be acceptable to use in the product. For example, two manufacturers make RF drivers that are fully compatible and work fine in our machine. But Field Service required the use of two distinct part numbers for reliability tracking, so the drawings allow for either part A or part B to be used. Depending on the current cost/reliability/availability of the two parts, we will designate one item as quantity u201C1u201D in the SAP BOM and the other item as quantity u201C0u201D. On the drawing, you call out one item as quantity u201C1u201D and the other as quantity u201C*u201D with a note explaining the ability to substitute one item for the other as desired.
8. JIT KIT support: In order to efficiently procure and build product, we may create documents that are u201Csetsu201D of material that can be procured on a single PO. So we end up with one set of drawings depicting way the machine is built and resides in the field for the next X years, and another group of drawings defining sets of material in special packaging aiding in efficient build of the product. On both groups of drawings the quantity would be u201C1u201D (or whatever qty is needed on the machine) but in the SAP BOMs, only the JITKIT BOM would have a quantity >0. The manufacturing BOMs would call out the u201Csetu201D as qty 1 but all the individual pieces of the set would be called out as qty u201C0u201D. In that way when you look at the where-use of a component in one of the sets, you would be able to determine what assembly drawings the item appears on, and also which drawing is the u201Cactiveu201D driver of the material.
9. Request to move certain items to later in the build process: Assembly drawings usually show the assembly in the finished state, as the assembly will look out in the field being used by the customer. But internally in the factory we often desire the assembly to be built to an unfinished level with some pieces missing to allow for easier testing of the full product. Or we may choose not to put the final cosmetic touches on a machine until close to the shipping point in order to avoid scratching or denting of exterior surfaces. For example, a modulator assembly will be built with recyclable in-house panels and only have the finished panels swapped out for the recyclable tooling panels at the clean, pack, and ship operation. Other assemblies will have access panels omitted altogether to allow for easy access for machine tuning in final test. These missing panels would be added at clean, pack, and ship. So in the SAP BOMs, we change the quantity from u201C1u201D to u201C0u201D in the assembly BOM, and create separate BOMs showing quantity u201C1u201D with the clean, pack, and ship items that complete the assembly built days or weeks earlier.
We have more than 25,000 occurrences of these types of needs for quantity zero in the BOM. Our work around (until this SAP "bug" is fixed is to assign qty .001, then uncheck the production and costing relevancy within the BOM (Item Status Long Text).
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