BOM Drop (Sales Product Configurator, Quote Estimator, Make to Order)

• BOM Drop as a feature in iDempiere - out of the box (without modification)
  • BOM Drop allows you to:
    • select a semi-finished or finished Product
    • review all levels of its Bill of Materials (all the way down to the lowest raw good)
    • change the desired quantity of any Product in the Bill of Material
    • choose to include/exclude optional Products in the Bill of Material
    • choose between option groups (radial button) - Example: choose "Red" or "Green" color
    • drop the configured BOM tree (including all levels) into a document - Example: Order, Project, Invoice
  • BOM Drop issues (as of 20180518)
    • Changing the product quantity at a semi-finished good level does not change the subsequent/dependent Quantities of raw good. Example: changing the Quantity of "Assembly Back Leg" semi-finished good in a GardenWorld "Patio Furniture Set" finished good does not automatically change the "Back Leg" Quantity.
    • The drop option into a Project is simplistic.
      • It does not take into account (or give consideration for) phases or tasks. Instead, I simply creates Project Lines assuming the Project is of type Line Level = "Project"
      • It does not take into account multiple BOM levels. It simply assumes you want all BOM Lines for all BOM levels (depths) in a single document.
• Enhancements that make the world much better:
  • It is not hard to imagine all kinds of enhancements to the BOM Drop window. Below are a couple of examples I have executed for customers:
    • Add a table to right of semi-finished and raw good entries in tree. The table can include
      • Sales Price List
      • Purchase Price List
      • Vendor
      • Lead Time
      • Pack Size
      • MOQ
    • Add a table under the BOM tree to show summarized data. Examples include
      • Total Sales
      • Total Cost
      • Expected Lead Time
      • Critical Parts List (ones most likely to cause issues)
    • Add more than one product tree. There are times you might want to group many products into a single "Project" where you want to configure all Products/BOM at the same time.
    • Be able to draft and save a current version of the tree for review by someone else at a later date. Be able to create versions for each iteration and see a history of versions.
    • Be able to create many documents as a result of the many BOM levels (BOM depth) of the configure Product. Example. be able to produce 10 Production Orders as a result of the 10 semi-finished Products in a single Bill of Material.
    • Add Product as a drop target (along side Order, Invoice and Project) of the BOM Drop. This concept allows you to create the concept of a "Template" Product that can be used to later create a modified/configured "Instance" Products.  (Make to Order product)
  • Tools you can create from BOM Drop by adding the above features to BOM Drop:
    • Sales Product Configurator
    • Product or Project Quote Estimator
    • Make to Order Product Template