A bill of materials says what a product is made of. But making a product is not only about components; it is also about the steps that turn those components into the finished item. In Odoo, those steps are operations, and this piece explains how they connect to the BOM.
Components and operations: the two sides of a BOM
An Odoo bill of materials has two kinds of content. The component lines say what goes into the product. The operations say how it is made: the sequence of production steps, each one carried out at a work center. The routing is that sequence of operations. A BOM that has only components describes what the product consists of; a BOM that also has operations describes both what it consists of and how it is produced.
Where operations live
In Odoo, the operations, the routing, are defined on the bill of materials itself. The BOM carries the list of operations alongside its component lines. Each operation has a name, a sequence position so the operations are in order, and an assigned work center where it is performed. So a BOM with routing is a single record that holds both the parts list and the production steps for the product.
How operations become work orders
The connection becomes concrete at production time. When a manufacturing order is created for a product whose BOM has operations, Odoo generates a work order for each operation. A work order is a single operation to be carried out, tracked at its work center. So the operations defined on the BOM are the template, and the work orders on a manufacturing order are the live instances of those operations for that specific production run.
This is the heart of the connection: the BOM's operations define how the product is made in general, and the manufacturing order's work orders are that definition applied to an actual production run. Tracking the work orders, their progress, the time they take, is how the floor is followed against the plan the BOM laid out.
Operations and component consumption
There is a further connection worth knowing. Components are consumed during production, and they can be associated with the operations at which they are used. This means a component is not just consumed generically; it can be tied to the step of the routing where it actually goes in. This makes the production model more accurate, the right components are used at the right operation, and it supports tracking production operation by operation.
When a BOM needs operations, and when it does not
An honest point: not every BOM needs operations. If a manufacturer does not need to track production step by step, a BOM with only components is enough; producing it is a single manufacturing order with no separate work orders. Operations and routing are worth defining when the manufacturer genuinely wants to track production by operation, manage work centers, follow time and progress step by step, and schedule the steps. A manufacturer should add the routing because it needs that level of tracking, not because the capability exists.
The takeaway
In Odoo, a BOM carries both components, what the product is made of, and operations, the routing, which is how it is made. The operations are defined on the BOM, each at a work center, in sequence. When a manufacturing order is created, Odoo turns each operation into a work order, the live instance tracked on the floor. Components can be tied to the operations where they are used. Add routing when step-by-step tracking is genuinely wanted. For how we approach Odoo for manufacturers, see our manufacturing work.