Used primarily in discrete manufacturing a BOM is more or less a recipe for manufacturing a product. It can include raw materials, production cells and processes as well as various other procedures.

A BOM can also be nested and include various levels of detail available in a drill down format.

One might also find a BOM in process manufacturing, but usually only because the software package being used does not produce proper batch tickets. Often a BOM might be referred to as a batch ticket or vice versa.