My first question is “how you would get information when it’s not in your system”? Does your supplier manage inventory for all of your plants and facilities resulting in a global view of spend? Does your supplier manage your data to the OEM or to suppliers so you have duplicate inventory costs?

Just considering the MRO items, the information could come from engineering or the integrated supplier. Logically, the integrated supplier would have been provided the part information from your company in order to setup and purchase the items in the first place. It is likely that they have the records as they were given them and they are linked to item setup in the purchasing system. The top level source would have been engineering who would have either had the equipment constructed or been responsible for the equipment purchase and the parts along with them. If after or during the purchasing activity the “key” item record is setup in the purchasing system using the part supplier information versus the OEM information, this will lead to item duplication. Duplication then will create overstock, variant pricing, variant lead times and other inconsistencies that add unnecessary cost.

Based on what you are saying it sounds like items in your system are based on either the part supplier data or specifically identified by the integrated supplier (their item number). The best scenario is when the OEM part is what is setup as the key item, having the purchase action to the OEM directly (OEM setup as a supplier) removing the “middle man” cost. Second after that is having the OEM part as the item, linked to the specific supplier(s) for purchase. Local purchase suppliers are still linked to the same item also. Having the same item record used across the enterprise is optimum.

I would also add that there should be a means to discover OEM part information as a reactive purchase need comes from maintenance. Parts are typically identified physically with OEM information. For example an Allen Bradley/Rockwell module with have the Allen Bradley part number physically stenciled on it. If a part breaks and maintenance needs one, there must be a way to find out if that part is in stock and a way to buy it if is not.  We believe that enterprise wide viewable, verified and standardized OEM part information will reduce the cost for maintenance by eliminating the time consuming discovery of part information in your systems and the correct parts are stocked. This approach also enables part sharing between facilities that is limited without common data. Part sharing in turn reduces overall cost through reduction of inventory.  With plants here in the U.S. and worldwide, this type of advanced planning is where the true brunt of the savings come through.

Obviously, much depends on the specific agreements with your integrated supplier. But consider the following questions. If the data stored in your system is not the OEM information then it’s logical to assume that it is data created by the integrated supplier from the OEM data.

    1) How does your company know that the information is accurate? Are there any checks between the data given to the integrated supplier and what you have in your system?

    2) How does your company know if they have the correct parts setup in the system and stocked appropriately? It seems that there is an opportunity for the integrated supplier to setup and stock items which aren’t necessary and would only be discovered through data transparency.

    3) How does your company know that you are getting the best price on parts? Even if there is a cost savings agreement with the integrated supplier, if there are duplicates the opportunity for piece cost reduction is lost when the true usage is not known because of part duplication. 

My second question in this. It seems from your response that everything is running quite smoothly. But is that true in Manufacturing? Do they ever experience loss of production because a vital part could not be found or was out of stock? How about Maintenance? Inventory management? Engineering? These are the departments that should be surveyed because there is a benefit for them too.

The first fundamental rule is that the customer business doesn’t stop. For all you data purists out there that believe that one day a switch to turn on the cleansed database is in the near future, please include me, I would like to see it. Most master data management projects included years and years of legacy data; therefore there is an acceptance to draw a line in the database by last used date. When I design a data cleansing project, I will have a new item setup process referenced to legacy items, this way the client business continues and as the new items are analyzed and setup, we can reference and update the legacy item information. Independently, we will always have the legacy data cleansing parallel the new set up process.

As the data cleansing project is designed, let’s start to explore the data elements and classifications. Every client will have their material types and material status set up but generally during the data / systems assessment there should be a thorough review of industry standards vs. company processes. I find that our clients appreciate the opportunity to bench mark their processes and data structure elements such as material types and status.  We will start with material type and material status.

Material Type

Material types can be as simple as goods and services or as complicated as service, critical spare, spare part, commodity, generic, blueprint, etc. The material type is a critical element to classify which template is used for setup in the downstream legacy systems with an inventory stocking strategy applied.

Obviously a service can be standardized by the class type to describe the service where a cost for the service can be standardized. The definition of the service is described by the properties, for instance a service class of CLEANING, OFFICE can be set up with descriptive elements such as 10,000 square feet, light cleansing (dusting / vacuuming), etc. From a purchasing perspective, the buyer can run the reports globally to determine how much is spent for office cleaning then evaluate the costs and utilize best practice sourcing strategies and other global supply chain processes to lower costs. The purpose of the standard naming conventions of classes and property are to provide enough standardize information to provide the ability to compare and cost services or products.

If a critical spare is being set up for sourcing and inventory, then the part has been evaluated by maintenance or engineering and determined that the spare is critical for production uptime. An inventory plan is developed for stocking the critical spare including an initial buy quantity, plan for stores (inventory) setup of item’s unit of measure (each, assembly, package, etc.), min / max, reorder quality, stocking location, etc.

Material Status

In addition to applying a “material type” to the item records, due to the longevity of materials used in the manufacturing operation, a material status should be utilized as a long term data maintenance process. In dealing with component manufacturers and suppliers, a component may be active from a plant use perspective; however the component manufacturer no longer manufactures the item. How is that possible? A piece of equipment can have a 10 year or a 50 year life span, to maintain a piece of equipment, a list of recommended spare parts is identified and set up for equipment maintenance. If the spare part component is obsolete by the manufacturer but the piece of equipment is still in use on the production line, the material status would be “obsolete active”. A different buy / stock strategy would be implemented, such as purchase all available stock from the manufacturer or another alternative is to source with unconventional methods such as through eBay or maybe contract the item to be built by a local shop.

Typical material statuses that I have experienced are active, inactive item referenced to an active item, obsolete active, obsolete inactive (typically the status to start the disposal process) and archive. The archive status is a classification used by the analysts to allow the viewing of the item information but is not visible to the client or the item record is not exported to the client systems.

I would appreciate any input or better yet a discussion of the different material types and material status used in Product Information Management (PIM) or Master Data Management (MDM). As an industry we inherited material types and material status used in a purchasing system or maintenance systems designed to meet business function but not from the data quality or master data management perspective. What are the proper data requirements for a material type or material status? The MDM or PIM software companies and data quality consultants need to provide input from the data management perspective to provide long term data management functionality.

Wikipedia’s definition for “Garbage In, Garbage Out, is a phrase in the field of computer science or information and communication technology. It is used primarily to call attention to the fact that computers will unquestioningly process the most nonsensical of input data (Garbage in) and produce nonsensical output (Garbage out).”

If you enter “garbage in” to a computer system, having the data passed through some very expensive ERP or CMMS software, isn’t going to change the data quality, the business results are equivalent to “garbage out”, which will be apparent in the day to day business activities and subsequent reporting used to determine the health of your business. Is it obvious that data should just not be moved from one system to a new system without a MDM program?

Let us now explore the concept of data migration. Wikipedia’s definition for Data Migration is the process of transferring data between storage types, formats, or computer systems. Data migration is usually performed programmatically to achieve an automated migration, freeing up human resources from tedious tasks. It is required when organizations or individuals change computer systems or upgrade to new systems, or when systems merge.

If an MDM program is not in process when implementing a new software or upgrading an existing software, the project should include an evaluation of the data and/or an evaluation of the additional functionality of the “to be” model of the new software identifying the new data required for improved business processes, reporting and the plan for legacy data clean up. A data migration project needs to be more than moving data from a legacy system to the new system.

I asked the question to one user of a maintenance software implemented a number of years earlier as I had the opportunity during a site visit at a plant. The software had awesome abilities to create and manage the relationships between equipment and spare parts, supplier contacts as well as the potential to improve processes, reporting and streamlining the information required for a maintenance organization. The company invested in the software / hardware, understood the ROI but lack the understanding of the data needs or management. The software was implemented however the majority of the functionality was not used, therefore the ROI was never achieved. When I asked why, I was told “no data and we don’t have time to add the data.”

Another scenario I came across, purchasing moved data from a legacy system to a new ERP system. The data wasn’t set up to a data governance or MDM procedure, legacy data riddled with duplication, obsolete information, unstructured descriptions and so forth. Different system, same legacy data quality and the ROI was never achieved.

I have one simple question, why invest in a software product if the data is not going to be treated as an asset? The results of a successful implementation are that the business processes are streamlined; simplified and reporting capabilities are enhanced through enabling both Master Data Management and Software functionality.

Garbage In, Garbage Out or Garbage Extracted, Garbage Migrated as we are moving to the next generation of technology. Are we relying on a skewed nonsensical output based on low quality data to make our critical business decisions?

Data vs. Information definition: to simplify the concept, data is managed by a combination of a team of analysts and software to achieve the goal of a cleansed record or useable information. Data is imported and profiled, classified, structured, verified, enriched, translated and reports generated; we create useable information from low quality data for use in decision making related to engineering, purchasing, maintenance, marketing, sales, etc. The data that is exported into client systems is information that will meet a predetermined set of data governance rules and information quality requirements.

Data Quality Experts, let have a discussion on the definitions of data quality, does an address or a product detail meet the requirement if only classified? Or should verification at source (contact for address or manufacturer / supplier for product) be required at initial setup of the data in the system or maintenance scheduled as part of the data governance program? Is the data incomplete? Does the MDM process include a question / answer scenario to complete the data?

MDM software designers and developers can we also have a discussion on the software’s ease of use to manage the stages of data cleansing to support a MDM philosophy and using advanced techniques to automate the management, add intelligence in processing data imports, workflows and data cleansing stages of classifying, profiling, matching, translation, data audit analytics, exception reports and status reporting of a data record?

I believe these are great discussion points and will serve as great blog topics.

I have a scenario to build a data flow task for Data Cleansing.

Logic 1 to be build:
Source data would be like 1050 and I should convert it to 1.050
Source data would be like 085 and I should convert it to 0.85

Profiling, structuring or normalizing data without any referential information risks errors in business use, especially if the data is use for purchasing or maintenance. If the goal is to automate the data normalization, the data needs to be referenced to metadata, 1050 could be a part number? Or a quantity? It could be an attribute representing a measurement such as length or diameter. Is it an inch or foot or meter?

I am a very detail oriented person; I have to be as one of my largest accounts requires me to participate in the day to day deployment of global MDM processes for one the largest automotive manufacturers! I am very interested to learn how businesses in other industries manage their data. I would hope that sharing of information and best practices among industry partners will be a win-win situation. At a minimum the discussion will be refreshing; the sharing of innovative information the will spawn the creative improvement needed to create truly efficient knowledge driven business processes, data classifications, metadata and definitions and translation. . . is anyone interested in discussing the logistics of managing translation as part of Master Data Management?

Is anyone interested in discussing my struggles and sharing yours trying to find standard global translations for ISO UOM (Unit of Measures)?

Is anyone interested in discussing what fields should be included in a MDM Data Governance Program for MRO data; UNSPSC, warranty, term of warranty, lead time, estimated price, ECCN, etc.

What Schema or classification structures are you using for spare parts and maintenance items? What about a discussion on using a public vs. priority classification system?

What are some best practices for migrating, profiling, structuring, mismatching and re-verifying legacy system data?

We have a nifty data mismatch process for manufacturer contact information; will this be easily implemented for a CRM data project? What about patient contact information in the healthcare industry?

There are a few bloggers out there that continually add content to their writings but it is starting to appear to be a small group, anyone out there interested in achieving data quality want to discuss “real” life best practices, lesson learned or discuss HOW of MDM, data quality or data cleansing.

Thank you for your comments in “Something beyond MDM is coming your way – would MDM 2.0 fly?” and starting the discussion to expand the definition of MDM to include data integrity, data quality, entity resolution, matching, data integration, governance, metrics and analysis. The topics discussed should also include work flow (management of data and analysts), translation management, data structuring, data profiling, duplication removal, data change management, verification contact management, etc.

The MDM and PIM software industry needs to take a step back to understand actual day to day business requirements of data management to achieve Master Data Quality. Lesson one is that data is created and supplied by many sources in many different formats at various quality levels. Data is created by engineering, submitted by integrators, manufacturers and suppliers. To add to the complexity of the information flow, data is introduced into businesses systems in different departments (engineering or purchasing or maybe plant from maintenance) with different data requirements to meet the needs of that job function. Now the next dynamic is mashing new data to existing legacy data in a number of systems to ensure no duplicates are created, managing obsolete / recommended use and functional equivalents. The old philosophies of a PIM or MDM software to “hold, provide search functionality and maybe a shopping cart” isn’t going to meet the true requirements of the new definitions of Master Data Management.

To meet the new definitions the MDM or PIM software needs to provide horse power to electronically and intelligently processing data to identify exceptions for manual intervention by an analyst. Data should be processed one time to ensure that the data record will be enriched to meet the requirements of the enterprise and then the record is moved to a maintenance program (managed also by the MDM or PIM software). The processing of data needs to be efficient and cost effective, from my perspective the cost of data management should be covered by the cost saving achieved by MDM management.

I look forward to the discussions as the definition of MDM is expanded to include data quality, data governance, data provenience as the software industry provides the intelligence, functionality and business processes to cleanse, enrich and management data for my client to ensure their ability to make confident business decisions based on data integrity and accuracy.

Here is to the future of PIM and MDM!

Jackie Roberts

The requirements for our clients business requires the complete documentation of spare part record change history including: Spare parts list submitted by, equipment used on, location of equipment, verification and data enrichment including who verified, change in information, when, etc. Why is this information important?

1. Spare Parts List – The supplier submitted spare parts list should be made a mandatory requirement for equipment design and build. In order to support a maintenance organization all suppliers should submit a full bill of material with recommended spare parts identified for the equipment they plan to deliver. The supplier requirement should include the original manufacturer for each spare part. Additional information tracked should include who submitted, file name, equipment name, equipment warranty, terms of warranty, when submitted and all contact information.

2. Use on Equipment – each spare parts list should include equipment part or model number, standardized name and a category of equipment. The standardized naming conventions are extremely beneficial for multi-facility maintenance use and will support common tasking procedures.

3. Location of Equipment – this information is essential for the export to a CMS maintenance system enabling spare parts to be set up for maintenance, work orders created and tracked and asset management.

4. Verification – is essential for accuracy of data quality. The verification process of a spare part is sometimes a true investigation. We receive data with suppliers listed as the manufacturer, partial part numbers, conflicting descriptions, incomplete descriptions, etc. Each data element change should be documented with when changed, who revised, what was changed and why.

5. Data Enrichment – What does the full enterprise (purchasing, engineering or maintenance) need to support the business activity? A spare part record should be touched 1 time and all information required should be included at the time the record is set up. Data Enrichment will include a reference to a class (category), required attributes to describe the part supporting the technical long description, estimated price, ECCN (Export Compliance Classification Number), UNSPSC® (United Nations Standard Products and Services Code®), lead time, warranty, terms of warranty, tasking information, etc.

In order to implement an accountable data governance program and useable data structure, a well planned data mapping should be documented for legacy systems of the enterprise. A complete data governance program will enable new efficiencies for data processing and the management of improved business processes such as parts sharing, identifying critical spares, strategic spare parts purchasing, and warehousing.

I have had experience working with single business home-grown classification structures and third party developed structures for purchase, currently I have chosen an open and public classification structure provided by ECCMA (www.eccma.org). This is beneficial to the customers that I support ensuring that they will always have access to the classification structure sometime referred to as the schema used to classify their data.

Implementing a classification requires setting up Identification Guide (IG) to establish the template definition to technically describe the product or service with enough information to support engineering, maintenance or purchasing while recognizing the limitation of software short and long description required character lengths. The IG template supports and simplifies the required information request to the manufacturer and suppliers to verify all information by our analysts to standardize the description.

To create an IG, we search the ECCMA class list; fortunately many of the classes are established. As the IG is set up we will use the ECCMA established class name convention; this will ensure that every item will be setup with the same name and format, every ball bearing item submitted will be classified as a BEARING, BALL.

The next step is to set up the properties required to describe the BEARING, BALL and for each property designated the data type requirements such as numeric, text string or designated unit of measure. The property value requirements for a BEARING, BALL might include TYPE, BORE DIAMETER, OUTSIDE DIAMETER, WIDTH, DYNAMIC LOAD CAPACITY, STATIC LOAD CAPACITY, MATERIAL and so forth. Our analysts will verify the data to the original manufacturer sometimes using xml to exchange the product information referred to as “Cataloging at Source”, the information requests are standardized and remove much of the quality issues commonly found in a non-standardized data verification or description process.

The property value description build is controlled by the sequence number of each property Item data that will make it’s way into a length restricted description field we place the most important information in the begin of the auto generated description.

Setting up the Identification Guides requires upfront strategic planning and detailed work, as you can imagine that a classification schema can be up to 10,000 classes depending on the industry but it provides a multitude of benefits including standardized requirements, a road map for our analysts to facilitate the process, improved data management reporting / metrics and enhances language translation for the global organization.

The first step is to develop the Identification Guide (IG) in order to baseline the properties needed to best describe the class. For example, let’s take the class of SCREW, SHOULDER and the properties TYPE, MATERIAL, FINISH, THREAD SIZE, DRIVE SIZE, SHOULDER DIAMETER, SHOULDER LENGTH, THREAD LENGTH, HEAD DIAMETER, HEAD HEIGHT, SHOULDER LENGTH TOLERANCE, MINIMUM TENSILE STRENGTH, CLASS, HARDNESS RATING and PACKAGE QUANTITY. The IG also provides the information needed for our analysts to acquire properties and our applications to sequence the properties within the short and long descriptions that are built:

SCREW,SHOULDER – | TYPE: HEX HEAD | MATERIAL: 18-8 STAINLESS STEEL | FINISH: PLAIN | HEAD STYLE: HEX | THREAD SIZE: 3/8-16 INCHES | DRIVE SIZE: 3/4 INCHES | SHOULDER DIAMETER: 1/2 INCHES | SHOULDER LENGTH: 2-1/2 INCHES | THREAD LENGTH: 3/4 INCHES | HEAD DIAMETER: 3/4 INCHES | HEAD HEIGHT: 1/4 INCHES | SHOULDER LENGTH TOLERANCE: ±0.005 INCHES | MINIMUM TENSILE STRENGTH: 80.000 POUND-FORCE PER SQUARE INCH | CLASS: 2A | HARDNESS RATING: B85 TO B95 ROCKWELL A | PACKAGE QUANTITY: 2

Each time an item is submitted for coding or processing the item is imported into a master database. Through intervention by our data analysts, the item navigates its way through a number of checkpoints including an auto-suggest to propose a class. The class and properties via the IG are the requirements our coding analysts use to verify the accuracy of the information submitted, to verify the completeness and to acquire the additional information needed to enhance and build an item or spare part description for our clients to base real business decisions.

The implementation of the eOTD is a two process scenario when working with our clients. First, the legacy data is mapped to the class, the item data is profiled, cleansed and enhanced to meet the requirements of eOTD IG, ensuring the client’s data quality goals are met. The updated item information needs to be applied to existing client item data. It is critical that all changes to data be tracked and logged. A properly planned and executed update to legacy ERP and CMMS systems should be initiated to incorporate the enhanced and corrected item information into the user facing systems. This is an extremely critical step as the downstream information flow will affect systems and uses such as inventory re-distribution, purchasing and contract management, engineering bills of materials and maintenance schedules. A thorough and complete mapping of data through the enterprise should be used to understand data flow across all business units. The mapping should include data entry points and data use points through all departments which set up all of the cost saving pay points as the data processing is streamlined.

The second process is an on-going data maintenance plan for new items that are introduced into the organization. This process should start at the introduction of item information into the system. All items and spare part information should be verified with the manufacturer and classified to the eOTD before setup or use in any system. The length of time the coding process requires is a critical element as the item or spare part information should be as complete as possible while at the same time be ready and waiting for the buyer to put the item on a contact or a maintenance employee to setup the tasking information in the CMMS for a piece of equipment. The only requirement for the employees who use the information after its initial entry into the system is to perform the actual requirement of their job and not to decipher a cryptic unstructured description.

If the items are pre-processed using the eOTD and the associated ISO standards, every item and spare part will be structured and standardized. The engineering, purchasing and maintenance departments will focus on the core of their day to day specialized responsibilities instead of searching for parts or dealing with trying to purchase items that a supplier does not recognize or have to acquire the missing information.

We all agree on some of the basic benefits both in process and cost such as reducing inventory with the identification of duplicate items, facilitation of inventory sharing and internal purchasing programs, reduced employee time searching for parts, common spare part usage strategies, reduced downtime in manufacturing equipment due to lack of information availability and ability to manage using a just in-time inventory model. The eOTD and its Identification guides are the building blocks and the roadmap to achieving structured and accurate data that can be reliably used to base real world decisions.

For more information on the eOTD please visit www.eccma.org.