Phantom BOMs and/or Kitting

Hi,

We have a manufacturing environment where we have several make to order items. The make to order items have production boms with several standard components. For example, a bike is the make to order item and has components of tires, a frame, and a seat.

However, there are also "optional" components that can be selected and configured with the make to order items. These optional items are phantom boms in the sense that they have components and labor, but they are not tangible items (not subassemblies). For example, there is an option item made up of screws, nuts, and bolts, plus a routing for some labor. The screws, nuts, and bolts are needed to attach a basket to a bike.

We can't have the options as phantom boms on the production boms, because we won't know what the option is until the item is configured by the customer. This would entail creating several new part number just to represent the amount of options that can be included on the bike.

We could conceivably create a production bom and routing for the options, since the option will be reserved to the sales order line. However, this will increase the amount of work orders by at least five times, so this isn't a viable solution either.

Also, we need to show the option on a sales order as a separate line item.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how this can be handled? I see we can create Assembly BOMs on a sales order and explode the components (assuming we could modify the sales order to only print the assembly while compressing the components). This could conceivably work, but we wouldn't be able to use work center labor, so this isn't a great option either.

Any ideas would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

Steve