Does anyone use EDM for only some of their products? We have both equipment and consumables product lines. The equipment needs ECO/revision control and therefore EDM, but the consumables don't need that. If anything changes it gets a new part number.

I'm wondering what the implications are if we stop using EDM for the consumables. Is there any reason this shouldn't work? The only glitch that's kept us from doing this in the past is that there two or three items consumables puts out that do require rev control - spooled material that requires ECO control of the spool. These are shipped by themselves as consumables, but also as part of the equipment kits. Since they're part of the equipment BOM, they need to be in EDM. They also are using material that is straight consumable material not needing rev control, but part of numerous other consumable items. EDM is therefore required on that material, so we use it for all material.

I can't find a clean way to decouple this. We could call the spooled material one thing for consumables (manufacturing side only) then convert it to another controlled EDM number for equipment, but that messes up planning and inventory. Does anyone know of a way to have a non-rev-controlled item show up in a rev controlled BOM? If we put it in manually, it'll just be expired next time we rev the BOM and copy it over.

Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated. We’d like to eliminate the unnecessary EDM work for consumables if possible.

We have a similar situation with packaging material. While all other items in the BOM are revision controlled, packaging material is not. You can define in Maintain Engineering BOMs components as E-Items (with revisions) or items without revision. Even if this item has been an E-item previously this can be changed in the E-BOM. But you need to have a new revision to change that.
In your case you could change the E-BOM field 'type' to item for consumables whereas the same material could be in another E-BOM for equipment with revision control ('type' set to E-Item).

Well, now I feel silly. I think this is exactly what I'm looking for. We've always done everything in EDM and copied it over. As such, I never really understood the reason for setting EBOM lines to Item vs E-Item. We've just always defaulted everything to E-Item. I've been ignoring it for so long that I didn't even think to look at it.

I'll have to test it further, of course, but a quick test tells me this will do what we want. I can create an item in ITM only and still put it in an EBOM. I was looking for a work-around, and the functionality's right there in front of me (not usually the case in Baan!). This is great.

Thank you for your input. This is going to save us a lot of work going forward. Now if I can just archive all that old EDM data I no longer need....
That's a project for another day!