Comparing a Multilevel Bill of Materials

I have two BOMs (Bill of Material) for which I want to compare. The BOM consists of BOM Level, Part Number, Description, ECO#, Revision#. The BOMs are on the order of 17K-19K parts, different sub assemblies can have the same parts, so I have to treat each sub-assembly as a unique collection.

Here's what I want to collect:

  1. Any Change in ECO# or Revision# - This should not be too difficult. Pull all the unique PN into two hases and compare the hashes.
  2. Change in the parts that make up a sub assembly. Additions, subtractions ... This appears to be a little more difficult. These BOMs can be up to 15 levels deep. Each level would need to be checked and compared. I would assume this would require a loop within a loop.
  3. Once all the changes are found I need to go back and capture the highest level PN an ECO affects. i.e. if sub-assembly A is made up of xyz and a ECO change affected everything in the assembly I want to report back A, if the change only affected x and it's sub parts then I want x reported back but not A. (This is required to determine the extent the ECO effected the full assembly.
I hope this is a little changing to someone. I am really looking for guidance and different approaches to this problem so I can attack it without having to use a hammer.

Thanks!

Edit kudra, 2002-06-06 Replaced pre tags with some other markup

In reply to Comparing a Multilevel Bill of Materials by Anonymous Monk

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