Tips & Hints for Compliance Management
BOMControl’s flexible compliance solution lets you manage compliance initiatives from government regulations to internally-defined rules. For more detailed information about Compliance, and managing a RoHS Compliance initiative in BOMControl, download the BOMControl Compliance Guide from the Document Library, accessible from the Useful Links section of your BOMControl Dashboard.
Tips for Creating a New Requirement: Admins Only
- In the Rationale Hint field, enter multiple possible rationales. Users can then cut and paste the appropriate text from the rationale hints when selecting a compliance status.
- Select File categories in the Evidence Location field to remove extraneous files from Compliance views—only Files assigned to the selected categories appear in Compliance BOMs and Compliance Reports.
- Set the Invalidation Rule to determine how Compliance status is derived for new working revisions when a working revision is made effective. To avoid inaccurate Compliance statuses on new working revisions, BOMControl recommends that you set the Invalidation Rule to reset to Unknown each time a new working revision is created, except for revisions with the statuses Exempt or Not Applicable.
Tips for Applying a Requirement to an Item Revision
Approved vs. Potential Source Relationships
Compliance requirements only apply to the Supplier Items named in approved source relationships; potential source relationships are not included in Compliance views.
- When you apply a Compliance requirement to an Item revision, you can choose to also apply the requirement to all previous revisions, all later revisions, or both.
- If you are applying a propagating requirement to an assembly, the status you enter will not be propagated to child Items in the assembly’s bill of materials. To enforce diligence at all levels of the bill of materials, you must enter status on each child Item individually.
Make Sure Compliance Status Is Set on the Working Revision
Check Compliance Status on Items Included in Changes
Changes are made to the working revision of an Item. Always verify the Compliance status on the working revision for Items included in a Change before submitting it for routing or approval.
When you apply a requirement to the effective revision of an Item, the requirement and any initial status information you set is automatically applied to the working revision of the Item. However, if you later set the Compliance status on the effective revision, the status of the working revision is not automatically updated. To update the Compliance status of the working revision at the same time as the effective revision, select the checkbox for "update status information on all later revisions to which the requirement is applied" in the Scope section of the page.
Manage Internal Initiatives
Arena allows you to define any compliance requirements you wish—not just government or agency regulations. If you have an internal process that includes an inspection by a certain individual or team, create a requirement and have the person responsible for inspection set its status to Compliant when their check is complete.
Roll the Revision on a Fully Compliant Assembly
Because the Compliance BOM for an assembly includes every revision of each component and subassembly that has appeared in the BOM during that revision’s effectivity period, the assembly cannot be considered fully compliant when a non-compliant, superseded revision of a component or subassembly appears in its Compliance BOM. When all effective revisions of child Items are compliant, roll the revision of the assembly.
Set a Compliance Status for Multiple Items
If you want to quickly set the Compliance status of multiple Items for a given requirement, use a “dummy” BOM that contains all the Items. Note that this procedure only works for propagating requirements.
- Build a list of the Items which will have the same status for that requirement (by performing multiple searches and using the Keep functionality).
- Select all the Items in your list and click Add to Assy.
- Click Create New Assembly and enter information about the assembly Item. The assembly Item is functioning only to group the BOM Items, so what you enter here is unimportant.
- Finish creating the assembly.
- On the assembly Item, click the Compliance view.
- Click the Compliance BOM subview.
- Use the checkboxes to select all BOM Items in the Compliance BOM (click the topmost checkbox to select all) and click Edit Requirement Status at the bottom of the table.
- In the top portion of the table, set the compliance status for all BOM Items and click Edit All.
- Repeat with different search criteria for Items that will have another compliance status.