The conundrum of spare parts management at a high level is perceived and often approached as a process that should be simple. Looking at it from the perspective of the many different entities that form the supply chain and are required to work together symbiotically—component manufacturers, Tier One and Tier Two suppliers, and OEM manufacturers—the logistical expertise needed to coordinate the information flow is anything but simple.

To realize cost savings from new process efficiencies, these separate legal entities need to integrate the information flow and internal groups within each entity such as purchasing, manufacturing engineering, plant maintenance, facilities management, warehousing, commodity management, and asset recovery. Each area must share the mission-critical master data related to the spare parts. Truly integrating the information flow within the conceivably 50-plus business units that indirectly work together across the automotive supply chain to deliver just one item to an OEM sounds literally impossible and cost prohibitive. However, your opinion may change when you read the next couple sentences.

It is estimated that process failures and bad information cost business $1.5 trillion or more in the U.S. alone (Larry English, 2007). A study of large companies, a majority of which have revenues of more than $1 billion, found that 31 percent believe that their costs for incorrect data are $1 million or more per year (Dave Waddington, 2008). The most common element needed by (and from) all involved in the supply chain of the spare parts that keep our lines running is data quality and content as information is transmitted from one organization to another.

Figure 1. Typical Supply Chain Spare Part Data and Information Flow

There is a lot of activity and even more information available around Master Data Management (MDM). MDM and data quality initiatives have become an industry trend these days. To champion a successful MDM effort, formal strategies regarding data standardization in content and structure, as well as import, storage, display, and transmission from your enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to industry partners are mandatory.

Every supplier, OEM, and manufacturer is using a unique set of data standards to attempt to achieve true “quality” for their data. But how powerful, efficient and beneficial to the automotive industry can the use of silo developed standards be? If all partners were using the same data standards, naming conventions, and requirements to describe spare parts, we can greatly streamline the process needed to exchange the information and at the same time reduce the number of physical and business process failures resulting from the low-quality descriptions contained in our legacy systems, and in most cases, new state of the art ERP systems.

The elements required to achieve a symbiotic information flow for the automotive industry are the same:

A common understanding of what data is needed for a particular class or type of item;
A common method to store the data;
A common method to display the data; and
A common method to transmit the data to those entities that do business together.
The answer is to simplify and standardize the methods used for the exchange of structured, accurate, and efficient data-sharing in an automated fashion, rather than manually sharing as it has traditionally been done. The Electronic Commerce Code Management Association (ECCMA) and DATAForge LLC have formed the Automotive Industry Content Standardization Council (AICSC). The purpose of the council is to facilitate the addition of automotive industry specific terminology to the electronic Open Technical Dictionary (eOTD), create identification guides for quality descriptions, or data requirement statements for individuals, organizations, locations, goods and services.

This also helps develop an automotive supply chain specific spend analysis classification. The dictionary being maintained by ECCMA and the AICSC is ISO standard and public domain; any organization can benefit from its use. ECCMA and the AICSC work with automotive-centric businesses to standardize the way data and information is stored, viewed, and exchanged.

Figure 2. Quality Description:

ECCMA has brought together thousands of experts from around the world and provides them a means of working together in the fair, open, and extremely fast environment of the Internet to build and maintain the global, open-standard dictionaries that are used to unambiguously label information. ISO 22745 spare parts data is capable of being used in any ISO 8000 computer application (neutral exchange), is easily translated, and must stand the test of time (long-term data retention) by using a public domain concept identifier.

Jacqueline Roberts is vice president of DATAForge LLC. For more information about ECCMA, visit the ECCMA Web site.

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