When a spare parts list, bill of material, or other product information for your ERP or inventory system is received, what processes do you follow to make sure the data is accurate and complete?
Typically, maintenance or inventory information is not given any due diligence until it is needed. For instance, a bill of material (BOM) is received, all the parts are set up in your ERP system, and the item record sits untouched until you need to place an order or set the item up in your maintenance system. Then you find that the part number is inaccurate and the supplier doesn’t recognize it, or there is an essential piece of information missing from the description needed to complete the order and bring the line back up. There is a solution: ISO-22745.
The ISO-22745 standard provides the framework needed for any organization to conduct business with internationally recognized data quality. Its most basic purpose is to provide a means to realize the benefits of ISO-8000, which is the ability to specify syntax, semantic encoding, and specification of data requirements for messages containing master data that is exchanged between organizations in the supply chain. Once an organization begins to standardize the descriptions it uses to describe materials, the organization can also begin to see cost savings and cost avoidance by implementing business intelligence algorithms to identify conditions such as duplicate items in inventory, purchase price disparities between facilities, vendor reductions, and identification of functional equivalent items.
ISO-22745’s primary facilitator is the open technical dictionary (OTD), a database of concept IDs and associated descriptive words used to “tag” individual data elements. Once each element is tagged with the concept ID from the OTD, the descriptive elements can be stored, sent, received, and displayed by different organizations without losing any meaning. This is done for multiple languages at once, with no need to translate into multiple languages independently.
ISO-22745 also includes guidelines for the use of identification guides (IG). An identification guide is a statement of requirements describing what data is needed about an item. If all elements are included in the description, this IG facilitates the machine-aided analysis of data quality because we have a clear understanding of what data is required without a person having to review the data.
ISO-22745 describes XML formats that can be used to automate the exchange of ISO-8000 master data.
i-xml is used to specify the data requirements or IG.
q-xml is used to query another organization for the data elements specified in the IG.
r-xml is used to reply to requests for specific data elements.
Together, these formats allow for the machine aided exchange of master data.
The Electronic Commerce Code Management Association (ECCMA) provides a very mature OTD, known as eOTD, which contains more than 440,000 terms that can be used to generate descriptions. ECCMA and DATAForge have also formed the Automotive Industry Content Standardization Council (AICSC). The AICSC is here to help organizations move from proprietary methods of managing descriptions to an ISO method that includes working together as an industry to meet the common goal of lowering operating overhead related to catalog maintenance.
Chris Roberts is an associate product manager at DATAForge™ LLC
For more information on AIAG’s activities and initiatives in electronic commerce, visit the AIAG Web Site or contact Mohammad Abidi.
View web publication:
http://aiag.informz.net/admin31/content/template.asp?sid=4762&brandid=4002&uid=0&mi=396973&ptid=415
Tags: BPO, Business Intelligence, data, data quality, dataquality, eOTD, linkedin, maintenance, manufacturing, masterdata, Software as a Service, spare parts