Trying to find the best way to manage parts manufactured in different locations

Depending on where parts are manufactured, the same assembly in one facility will have a set of seals individually called out in the bill of materials. That same assembly put together in a different facility, due to purchasing restrictions, will have the seals in a kit instead. Older versions of Windchill allowed for zero quantity items in the BOM, but as we have upgraded over time, new revisions of these assemblies have to be updated to remove zero quantity items.

Currently we're trying to figure out what the best way to manage this these parts would be. In the CAD model, the seals are manually added in the correct position, and then the kit was added as a zero quantity in the BOM. We cannot create a kit assembly due to the fact that the same seals are in different locations in different assemblies where the kit is used.

We currently think, and are investigating if MPMlink is going to be the best way to move forward with this problem, or if there's a better way that we haven’t thought of yet.

One thought we’ve had but haven’t had the chance to investigate yet is if a kit’s placement could be driven by the assembly, that would allow for the same part number to be placed in various assemblies, but not have a family table driving the location. Because I hate family tables, as most of my user base will use them incorrectly.

I would like to hear your thoughts.