Does any one have any Secret Bills of Materials that they need to protect? If so, How are you accomplishing this?
HELP!
I’m going to assume you are doing this for ITAR?
I was going to have to do this myself for a company but the plant was closed. I was going to look at the Territory functionality and try to leverage that to create my own “territory” security for revisions. Not sure how easy/hard it would have been, but that is maybe one avenue to look at.
Another idea could be using BPM Holds. If you set a BPM Hold on a record, you could then restrict users from pulling up certain records.
Could you explain more what your end solution needs to look like? Depending on what you require it might be possible to customize certain screens to hide the BOM and then use menu access to make it so some users can only see the customized versions.
But you didn’t really define “protect”
I’m not even sure what ITAR is lol
Ok can I ask why does the BOM need to be secret? And from whom are you trying to keep it?
IE An individual person? or a group? Can that person have access to other BOMs?
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Hi Evan,
We only want certain people to be able to see the Bill of Materials in the engineering workbench, only certain people be able to open the method tracker and only certain people to be able to see the job materials on the job. All for a specific part. Does that a little more clear?
Everyone! 
, except me LOL
No one should have access to it in the engineering WB, Method tracker and job. The operation is subcontract and the supplier knows and adds to the formula from their inventory.
So if nobody can see this BOM, what function is it serving exactly? If its subcontract than its not serving an inventory purpose right?
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Coca Cola Secret Ingredient Recipe 
I heard its a lock of Trumps hair, gives it the Fuzz
I’m not sure I understand what you mean, we still need to issue the material to the job to relieve inventory, and to have correct job costing before receiving the finished product to inventory.
Jennifer
We only want certain people to see it
Jennifer
Ha ha 
So you have a part/job that you are building. one of the operations you send to the supplier and they do their top secret stuff to it. it comes back to you and you do other stuff and finish the job?
if the secret stuff is all at the supplier, you dont need their stuff on your bom. just have an Subcontract op with the total cost of what they are doing that is top secret.
I’d imagine most people could quickly figure out from job tracker what the BOM was. Or other places
Like Inventory-WIP reconciliation
Or Work In Process
Or probably a dozen other ways.
Edit, never mind on Work In Process. That’s just a summary.
Not all of the secret stuff is the suppliers, some of it is ours…
Let’s start back at the beginning.
First of all, are you only talking about the Bill of Materials, or are you referring to the entire Method of Manufacture (which also includes the Bill of Operations)?
Out-of-the-box, this information is available in TONS of ways to pretty much everybody (Quotes, Jobs, Engineering, Parts, Traveler, Production Detail report, to name just a few). It will be virtually impossible (meaning: more work than anyone wants to pay you to do) to make a single item (or even a single MOM) invisible to “everyone” (except a select few). I’m working with a client right now that has a similar request (they work in a very regulated industry and there are certain employees that are not allowed to see certain things), but even that will be handled at the Site (Plant) level, and it’s only one employee so we can (probably) use a Security Group.
There are SO MANY WAYS that and SO MANY PLACES where people can get access to that information that it’s going to be extremely difficult, assuming it’s even possible.
Can you be exactly specific, and say exactly what you want to do? Are you trying to make a single operation or a single material or an entire MOM invisible? How will the people that will need to work with that operation/material/MOM be able to do their jobs without this information?
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Which is why we need to keep the job secret too 
The only operation is subcontract, so the only people that will see it is the person receiving the subcontract and job to inventory.
I understand the hurdles, but have been asked for a solution.
Is the security a requirement, or a company policy? I’m thinking you use an entirely different warehouse or plant, and restrict access to that warehouse/plant to only the folks that need it.
You can transfer the costs between warehouses once the project is complete.
3 Likes
To create the PO for the subcontract vendor, the Buyer would have to know the job number. The Shipping department would have to know what to send out to the subcontractor and the Receiving department would have to know what to do with the thing when it came back. The Finance department would have to know who to pay and how much and why. The Sales department would likely need to be able to tell the customer how long it was going to take, and why there may have been a delay. Honestly, the only real way to make this a “secret” would be to do it outside the system and have somebody in on the secret just make a bunch of inventory transactions and journal entries when it’s finished.
HI Ernie,
Exactly the issue. We only need to make the Bill of Materials invisible, and I would guess only on the paper, and not let anyone have access to it on any jobs, quotes, engineering.
The only operation is a subcontract and the company that mixes this item knows what they need and add a few items from their own inventory, so that isn’t a problem…
Thanks for all of the questions. I agree that this may not be possible, but thought I would reach out to this amazing community full of super smart Epicor professionals to see if anyone had a solution
Maybe an enhancement for 2050?