Beyond the BOM
A Federation Architecture for Complex Engineering Data
The structural gap under every industrial PLM programme, and what to build instead.
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About the book
Every industrial engineering organisation has run into the same PLM pattern. Two years into a programme, most of the work the lifecycle actually requires still happens outside the tool. Decisions live in meeting minutes. Tacit knowledge stays uncaptured. Interface contracts sit in documents nobody indexes.
Beyond the BOM diagnoses the structural cause and specifies the architecture that resolves it. The engineering data model is missing seven primitives it needs as first-class managed objects: system, interface, space, verification, configuration history, decision and rationale, and judgment. The book develops each in turn, then specifies the federation architecture that lets them sit above existing PLM, PDM, ERP, MES, and MBSE tools rather than replacing any of them.
Written in disciplined declarative prose. Anchored in worked cases from Nokia, aerospace, automotive, and process industries. Engages honestly with adjacent traditions including AEC's federation pattern, MBSE, STEP, ISO 15926, OSLC, ShareAspace, and Management of Change.
Who it is written for
- Chief engineers and PLM leads who have been through one or more industrial PLM programmes and want to understand why the recurring failures happen structurally
- Systems-engineering practitioners working across MBSE and PLM boundaries
- Executive sponsors weighing whether to commit to the next thirty-six-month industrial-software programme
- Architects and consultants advising industrial clients on engineering-data infrastructure
Also available: the training programme
For organisations that want to take the architecture from the page into practice, the book's material is also delivered as training. Each module pairs the chapter's argument with worked cases from European industry, and leaves participants with the diagnostic instrument and the language to apply the architecture in their own organisation.
Executive briefing
Diagnosis, architecture, deployment trajectory in one sitting. For sponsors and programme leadership. No deep dive into the primitives.
Architect workshop
Six modules plus the diagnostic from Chapter 14. Designed to leave a team able to run their own architectural inventory.
System as architectural object
A bounded composition with scope, owner, and lifecycle — not just a parts list.
Interface as a first-class object
The contract between subsystems, with its own owner, version, and change control.
Space as a peer to part
Functional regions that own requirements independently of the parts that realise them.
Verification as continuous capability
Evidence tied to a configuration — invalidated automatically when it changes.
Configuration history
As-built, as-delivered, as-maintained: system states across the product's life.
Decision and rationale
Design choices recorded with alternatives, validity conditions, and boundaries.
Bring the training to your team — in-house or open enrolment. Get in touch on LinkedIn.
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