Chickens and Toasters
What's the difference between a chicken and a toaster?
From a manufacturing perspective, they’re polar opposites. A toaster is a single entity that’s composed of many parts and sub-assemblies. The manufacturing process starts with lots of little things and assembles them into one larger thing. The Bill of Materials is shaped like an A – broad at the bottom of the process but focused into a single point at the top – the end of the process. It’s E pluribus unum.
A chicken, on the other hand, is essentially manufacturing in reverse. We start with a single entity and disassemble it into multiple products. (Let’s skip the details). The manufacturing process starts with one large thing and ends with many, smaller things. The Bill of Materials is shaped like a V – a single starting point at the bottom but many end points at the top. It’s E unum pluribus.
If you’re in the protein business – the processing of fish, poultry, beef, or lamb – you need an inverted Bill of Materials that’s shaped like a V rather than an A. You can’t get it from most manufacturing software vendors and that’s a fatal flaw for your business. You can get it from Lawson. That’s just one of the reasons that we’re a market leader in protein – and in food processing in general.
(Yes, you can also get the “standard” A-shaped Bill of Materials from Lawson. We also do I- shaped and X-shaped BOMs. We’ll deal with those in future Opinionizers).
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