Paperless Parts
Paperless Parts, the leading quoting and collaboration platform for custom part manufacturers, announced the general availability of its new BOM Builder, the most powerful feature release in company history. The BOM Builder transforms the process of building out the bills of materials (BOMs) for complex assemblies, making it fast, intuitive, and secure—even when RFQ packages only include 2D drawings.
With the new AI-powered BOM Builder, estimators can automatically create, organize, and update multi-level assemblies using a flexible, spreadsheet-style interface—saving hours, if not days, of manual effort.
“Before the BOM Builder, quoting a complex assembly could take an entire day—or even weeks,” says Tawny Bush, lead estimator at Reata Engineering & Machine Works. “I remember spending 2-3 weeks building a 1,000-part assembly in the system, and that didn’t even include adding times or outside processes,” she recalls. “Now, I can build a 32-part assembly in five minutes, and I’m confident I could knock out that 1,000-part job in less than a day. The time I’m saving means we can quote more work, faster.”
Assembly-heavy shops stand to benefit significantly from the BOM Builder, but even for manufacturers who only quote assemblies occasionally, the time savings quickly add up. For many job shops, the difficulty of quoting complex assemblies has been a barrier to entry for this type of work.
“We’ve seen the amount of assembly work grow consistently across our customer base over the last three years, and anticipate that trend to continue,” shares Jason Ray, CEO and co-founder of Paperless Parts. “But we hear from a lot of shops that they will no-quote assembly-heavy jobs because the time investment to quote them relative to the winning percentage is so low. The BOM Builder changes that. It’s going to help more manufacturers quote complex work faster and with less risk, opening the door to new business.”
“Whether it’s a sheet metal shop quoting multi-part assemblies or a precision machine shop handling complex medical or aerospace & defense builds, the BOM Builder can release a huge bottleneck,” says Jason Luce, Paperless Parts Chief Technology Officer. “Even a small percentage of assembly work can consume a disproportionate amount of quoting time.”
Paperless Parts’ BOM Builder is also the only AI-driven BOM extraction tool built inside a FedRAMP Moderate and CMMC-compliant boundary, making it safe to use for sensitive DOD and aerospace work.
“We were riding a bicycle, and Paperless Parts just built us a car,” says Nathan Bennett, estimator at Morton Enclosures upon using the BOM Builder for the first time.
Features of the BOM Builder include:
- AI-powered BOM table extraction from prints or spreadsheets
- Spreadsheet-style interface where users can quickly enter, paste, and organize BOM data
- Flexible BOM structure that allows the BOM to be built in any order—by part number, assembly group, or customer documentation structure.
- Easy drag-and-drop when attaching files to parts, moving components between subassemblies, and visually managing the BOM structure.
- Smart purchased part mapping makes it easy for users to indicate which parts are purchased in bulk and quickly associate any hardware with purchased component records.
- Mistake-proof editing tools (undo, autosave, and easy rearrangement) that eliminate rework and reduce training time.
- A “Split PDF” action that allows users to break up large drawing packages and assists in assigning them to the right parts in the BOM.
- ERP integration; users can push the finalized BOM directly to their ERP when the job is won—no need to duplicate effort.