What information can be gleaned from a bill of materials? If you were asked to produce an item based solely on a copy of its BOM, what missing information would you need?

What will be an ideal response?

A bill of materials is a record of all the components of an item, the parent component relationships, and the usage quantities derived from engineering and process designs. You would have a parts list, but would have no idea how long it might take to assemble an item, or receive the components from a supplier (lead times). You would also need to know what the levels of inventory were for each item listed in the BOM. Since the question is phrased as "produce an item" you might assume that only one end item was required, but if the interpretation is otherwise, you would need to know a production quantity.