Patent ID: 8065204

Claim:
A method for managing computer production in an enterprise, comprising: receiving a block of software offerings, each block being associated with at least one product series, wherein a software offering includes at least one software class and at least one associated software specification, the software class being a specific type of software, software offerings being associated with respective product series to establish a configuration, specifications being individual software items that are associated with classes wherein a specification is an option that a customer may choose within a class, wherein a class may have more than one specification while a specification is assigned to only one class, software offerings being associated with respective individual product series to establish a configuration range, a configuration range for a stock keeping unit (SKU) representing a product when region, language, various operating system versions, and platforms are factored, a configuration range being a list of all the software offerings that are offered for a respective SKU; receiving a product series component structure defining parts for a respective product series; adding parts required for a product series to the block associated with the series, parts being assigned to each software class and related software specification pair in a block based on the part or parts required for the pair to thereby define a design structure; storing the data structure on a tangible computer readable medium; and establishing a software bill of materials (BOM) on the computer readable medium based on the design structure using at least one of: a template and/or a snapshot; and accessing the computer readable medium to provide software on a computer.