Should a 1,000-Candle Production Order Have One Combined BOM or Separate BOMs for Every Fragrance and Container Variation?

The short answer: calculate separately, buy combined

A bill of materials answers "what goes into one of these?" — and every variation that changes any ingredient is a different answer. Two fragrances in the same jar share wax, wick and jar but not oil; one fragrance in two containers shares oil and wax but not jars, and possibly not wicks. So a 1,000-candle order split across fragrances and containers has as many BOMs as it has variations. Trying to write one combined BOM for the whole order loses the information you need: how much of each oil, how many of each jar, and which test applies to which candle.

But nobody buys from a BOM. You buy from a purchase sheet, and that is where combining pays. Lines that are the same material across variations — the wax, the stickers, often the wick — are added up before rounding to packs, which avoids paying for several partly used bags. Lines that differ — each oil, each jar — are added up only across the variations that share them. The result is a two-level structure: per-SKU BOMs for requirements, one sheet for procurement. It also keeps the allowances honest: rejects and tests are counted per SKU, because each SKU can fail on its own.

The four SKU BOMs

The example order is 1,000 candles in four variations: two fragrances — Fresh Strawberries and Eucalyptus Spearmint — in two containers: a 200 g candle in the White Matte Glass Jar (fill not published, so 200 g is illustrative — weigh a test pour) and an 85 g candle in the Golden Aluminium Tin (85 g is CSI's published fill). The split — 300 / 300 / 200 / 200 — is a labelled example. All four use Natural Soy Pearl Wax at 8%; Soy Pearl has no published fragrance ceiling, so 8% is a starting load to test. Each SKU carries a 3% reject allowance, 2 test candles and a 4% pour-loss allowance on wax and oil (labelled working assumptions).

Each row is a complete recipe: if the client cancelled one variation, you would strike one row and every other number would stand. That is the first reason to keep SKU BOMs separate. The second is testing: the 85 g tin and the 200 g jar have different diameters and fills, so their wicks are validated separately — CSI publishes no wick sizes per diameter — and a wick that passes in the jar has not passed in the tin until a tin candle has burned to the end. The single-wick post sets that test up.

Combining on the purchase sheet

Applied to this order, the purchase sheet has seven CSI lines instead of twenty. The wax line adds all four SKUs: 153.40 kg, which is where Natural Soy Pearl's bulk break matters — it is the only CSI soy wax that gets cheaper per kilo at volume (₹450.00 at 1 kg, ₹424.80 from 5 kg), and its 50 kg bag is listed (in limited stock; confirm on WhatsApp). The Fresh Strawberries line adds the jar and tin SKUs: 6.67 kg. The tin line adds both fragrances' tins: 418 tins, which rounds to 420 in packs of 12.

What combining saves — and what it does not

If the same order were bought as four separate kits, each SKU's lines would be rounded to packs on their own. The table compares the two, line by line, using the cheapest listed in-stock packs in both cases.

The saving is ₹932.00, and it is worth being honest about where it comes from. Most CSI products are priced linearly — Eco wicks at ₹5.90 each in every pack, White Matte jars at ₹70.80 in 5s or 10s, most oils flat above 100 g — so combining mostly saves the overshoot of rounding four times instead of once, not a better rate. The wax line happens to round to the same bags either way on this order, because Soy Pearl's 5 kg and 50 kg tiers are priced at the same ₹424.80 a kilo; the tins save a pack of 12 and the jars a few singles. The bigger benefits are practical: fewer partly used bags, one oil lot per fragrance across both containers, one sticker order, and a single place to see whether a line is short.

When the client changes one variation

The two-level structure earns its keep the first time the client changes their mind. Suppose they move 100 tins from Fresh Strawberries to Eucalyptus Spearmint — 100 and 300 tins instead of 200 and 200. In the SKU BOMs, two rows change and two do not. On the purchase sheet, only the two oil lines move: wax, tins, wicks and stickers are untouched because the total number of tins, and the container, are the same.

With a single averaged BOM you would have had to re-derive everything to find that out; with four rows you strike one figure in each of two rows and the sheet tells you which purchase lines to amend. If the oil has already been bought, the change also tells you exactly how much of which oil is now surplus or short — which is the conversation to have with the client before you agree to it.

Building the two levels, step by step

The CSI products on the sheet

The rest of the 500–1,000 candle cluster

This page owns the BOM structure. The 500 lavender + 500 vanilla post covers the single-container, two-fragrance case and the four-fragrance corporate post the oil split in more depth; the double-wick post shows a variation where only the wick line changes; buffer logic decides which allowances live at SKU level; and the procurement sheet is the second level in copyable form. For ongoing production, combining 20 SKU BOMs applies the same rules monthly.

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