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10 SMT007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2026 F E AT U R E A RT I C L E BY S C OT T RYA N , C E T EC Practical Material Management for High-Mix EMS while preserving each customer's discrete records. How can a small or mid-sized EMS company punch above its weight, supporting each customer with the detail a larger company would provide, while keeping inventory and supply chain costs under control? The answer starts with approved component modeling, consolidated planning and purchasing, and family kitting. A full-suite manufacturing ERP connects these processes to production scheduling, procurement, quality, traceability, and accounting. That integration gives smaller companies a prac- tical way to scale. High-mix EMS companies take on their customers' chaos and supply chain volatility. Every customer that sends a BOM expects to be handled as if they were the only customer in the building. Inventory must often be tracked by customer, PO, or program to satisfy contractual, quality, and trace- ability requirements. Yet dozens of BOMs, each with hundreds of components across multiple assembly levels, can share manufacturer part numbers and SMT lines, and few jobs follow the standard order-to-ship- ment path. Treating every job as an island multiplies purchasing and material handling costs. Profitable growth requires simplifying shared physical inventory