What Is a BOR Level in a Routing? EDGEBIC Definition

A BOR level is the hierarchy depth of a routing step in the product structure tree. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, a bill of routing can nest: the item you ship has its own operations, and any sub-assembly it consumes has operations of its own. Top-level end-item operations sit at level zero, and each layer of sub-assembly beneath sits one level deeper.

Think of a dinner where you make the sauce from scratch. Plating the dish is the top level. Making the sauce is one level down. Making the stock that goes into the sauce is one level below that. It is all one meal, but knowing which layer a task belongs to tells you a great deal about when it happens and what it feeds.

For the broader vocabulary of planning, see the manufacturing glossary.

How a BOR Level Works

A simple product has a flat routing. Saw, mill, deburr, inspect, ship. Every one of those operations is performed on the item itself, so every one of them is level zero.

Real products are often not flat. A pump has a housing, a gearbox, and an impeller, and each of those is manufactured before final assembly can happen. The routing then has depth. Final assembly is level zero, because it is performed on the pump. The gearbox operations are level one, because they belong to something the pump consumes. If the gearbox itself contains a machined shaft with its own operations, those sit at level two.

The number counts how far a step is from the shipped item. Zero is the shipped item. Each step away from it adds one.

That label is about structure, not about timing. The actual order in which operations run comes from the dependency links between steps, which is what the engine reads when it sequences a job. But structure is what makes a long routing readable. Without levels, a nested product presents as one undifferentiated list of thirty operations with no visible relationship between them. With levels, the same list resolves into a tree, and you can see immediately which run of operations is feeding which.

A Concrete Example

You build a pump. Its routing has fourteen steps and, read as a flat list, it is hard to follow.

Read with levels, it makes sense at once.

Steps at level zero: final assembly, pressure test, paint, final inspection. These four are performed on the pump itself. They are the last things that happen and the ones that touch the shipped product.

Steps at level one: the gearbox operations. Gear cutting, heat treatment, gearbox sub-assembly. These belong to the gearbox, which is fitted into the pump at final assembly. They are one layer down.

Steps at level two: the shaft operations that feed the gearbox. Turning, grinding, inspection of the shaft. These are two layers from the shipped item.

Now the fourteen steps are three legible groups instead of one long list. A planner can see that the shaft work has to complete before the gearbox work, and the gearbox work before final assembly, and that the paint step at the end has nothing to do with either. The engine gets the same clarity from the dependency links, but the human reading the routing gets it from the levels.

How EDGEBIC Uses It

The level is carried on each routing step and shows up in three ways:

• Reading a nested routing. In the routing grid, the level tells you which operations belong to the end item and which belong to something feeding it, which is the difference between a legible routing and a wall of rows.
• Alongside the design canvas. The flow chart view shows the same structure as visible branches, so the sub-assembly path renders as its own run of nodes rather than an inline segment of the main chain.
• As a structural label, not a timing rule. Sequencing comes from the dependency links between steps, so the level describes the product rather than instructing the engine.

For the thing that sits at a deeper level, see what is a sub-assembly in manufacturing. For how the deeper level feeds the top one, see how a sub-assembly feeds its parent job. To add one yourself, follow how to add a sub-assembly to a routing. For the free-text notes a planner can pin to a step on that same design canvas, see what is a BOR annotation in routing.