A March 2026 survey of 439 engineering and sourcing professionals, reported by Accuris, found that 77% of engineers now spend five or more hours a week just reading datasheets and comparing alternatives, and 72% of organisations are absorbing more than $50,000 a year in reactive sourcing costs. BOM (Bill of Materials) scrubbing is the process meant to catch these problems before they reach the production floor, and many teams still run it too late, too manually, or not at all.
What Is BOM Scrubbing?
BOM scrubbing validates each line on a bill of materials against current part data before procurement or production. It ensures every manufacturer's part number is accurate, available, compliant, and not approaching obsolescence. When performed effectively, it transforms a design engineer's parts list into a reliable document for procurement teams.
If BOM scrubbing is skipped, errors often emerge later, typically at critical moments. Examples include incorrect part numbers from CAD exports, outdated manufacturer names after acquisitions, or components that have quietly reached end-of-life (EOL), only discovered when purchase orders go unfilled.
Why BOM Scrubbing Can't Wait Until Production
Discovering BOM issues only after a shortage occurs is costly. Accuris also estimates that a single PCB redesign costs between $50,000 and $250,000, with cumulative rework on some programs exceeding $930,000. Spot market premiums for urgent sourcing can be three to ten times higher than planned purchases.
The same report found that 68% of respondents make more than six component changes per design, and 46% experience three to ten costly supply disruptions annually. These issues arise when a BOM is scrubbed only once, while lifecycle status, compliance, and supplier risk continue to change.
The Two-Pass BOM Scrub
Running a thorough BOM scrub means two distinct passes. The first pass fixes what is on the page. The second pass judges whether what is on the page will still be sourceable when production needs it.
BOM Matching (the First Pass)
Matching means validating every manufacturer part number (MPN) against live distributor and manufacturer data. Typos, internal-only part codes, and inconsistent naming after a corporate acquisition (Xilinx parts now carry the AMD name) all break automated procurement systems that expect an exact match. Where an Approved Vendor List (AVL) allows more than one MPN per line, every listed alternative needs the same validation, not just the primary choice.
None of this is optional, even though it feels mechanical. A BOM that fails to match sends procurement chasing quotes for parts that do not exist under the number written down, burning days before anyone notices the real problem.
Risk Assessment (the Second Pass)
Risk assessment asks a harder question of every part that does match. Is it still active, or has it moved to Not Recommended for New Designs (NRND), end of life, or fully obsolete? Does it still meet RoHS, REACH, or conflict-minerals requirements, and has anything changed on that front since the design was last reviewed? Is it single-sourced, and if that one supplier has a bad quarter or sits in a geopolitically exposed region, does the whole build stop?
This is also where BOM scrubbing intersects with counterfeit risk. According to the ERAI 2025 Annual Report, obsolete devices accounted for 60.02% of all suspect and counterfeit parts reported that year, the single largest category by far, and roughly 24% of those suspect parts passed electrical testing despite being fakes. A part of your BOM that is flagged as EOL or NRND is most likely to attract a counterfeit substitute if sourced from an unvetted broker under deadline pressure.
Our guide to the electronics grey market covers why that market exists and what separates a safe transaction from a risky one. Our component obsolescence management guide walks through lifecycle status codes in more depth if your scrub is turning up more NRND and EOL flags than expected.
The Question Most BOM Scrubs Never Answer
Most BOM scrubbing guides stop at the flagging stage. A part gets marked EOL, NRND, or single-supplier, and the checklist ends there. What happens next is where supply chain risk is reduced or exacerbated, and it comes down to how quickly and safely you can source a genuine replacement.
Nobody wants to panic-buy from the first broker who answers the phone, but that is exactly the moment a counterfeit part enters a BOM, given how heavily obsolete devices skew the ERAI data above.
Component Sense checks your flagged lines against our inventory of traceable, tier-one-origin electronic components automatically, and alerts you the moment a match becomes available. Every part purchased through us comes with a 12-month warranty and a 100% counterfeit-free guarantee.
BOM Scrubbing as Bill of Materials Engineering
Treating BOM scrubbing as ongoing bill-of-materials engineering is what actually reduces risk before production. A one-time scrub at project kick-off only catches the problems that existed on day one. It does nothing for the part that goes EOL eight months into a two-year production run, which is just as common a failure mode.
In practice, that means re-running the risk assessment pass at several defined checkpoints. Scrub at New Product Introduction (NPI), before every design freeze, on every engineering change order, and on a fixed cadence (a quarterly audit is a reasonable starting point) for any product still in active production. AI can take over much of the matching pass, spotting anomalies and drafting RFQs, but the risk-assessment judgment calls and verifying that a replacement part is genuine still need a person in the loop.
Upload Your BOM
How good a BOM scrub depends on how often it runs and how quickly a flagged part is resolved. Matching catches what is already wrong on the page, while risk assessment catches what is about to change, and neither passes much good if the part that comes out the other end still takes a week to source safely.
BOM Matching completes the process. Upload your BOM, and Component Sense will check each line against traceable, tier-one-origin parts, flag items approaching NRND or EOL, and notify you when a genuine, warrantied replacement is available. The service is free to use with no obligations, and manufacturers report up to a 30% improvement in procurement performance after using it.