Posts Tagged ‘Maximo’
Monday, March 14th, 2011
My strong belief in Master Data Management (MDM) incorporates the management of data from the entry point and multi-channel uses throughout the enterprise. This philosophy results in a holistic understanding of the data content and uses achieving data quality enterprise wide. Yes, an overwhelming task but it can be achieved if you take a step back from the one-dimension software thought process . . . . centered around one software product. Through my experiences, the lack of ownership within the enterprise results in a chain of isolated data islands with only the concerns to perform the isolated activity. MDM is much more than a single data activity or transaction within the operation or a software system to perform said activity.
In the perfect MDM world, naturally not only does the data (product, services, spare parts) adhere to governance, structure of classification, quality and content but also a data structure of location of use. An example of structure could incorporate naming standards for location of use, for example plant or office. Within the plant, the use could be referenced to a department, referenced to a piece of equipment and to a specific location within the department. This type of structure is preset in a MDM plan and will benefit the maintenance data structure. The MDM data plan and structure meets the requirements of the complete enterprise, the purchasing department may only require 5 or 6 data elements but the maintenance department will require 10 or more. This is why Master Data Management requires a complete view of all data concepts and use.
Think of how powerful the analytics are if the enterprise is set up with established standards through governance for plant / facilities location structure, location names, equipment location structure and equipment naming standards. The benefits include the ability to view equipment and spare parts enterprise wide enabling the initiation of common spare parts strategies, spare parts sharing programs supporting inventory planning and reduction.
This type of MDM planning also supports equipment moves or disposals with the view of spare parts associated to the equipment. The spare parts can be packaged and moved or disposed of at the time of the disposition of the equipment. I can’t count the number of times that I have been told that I am not even sure if we still have this piece of equipment that these inventoried spare parts are used on.
Now the beauty, yes I said beauty, is that the required data structure can be set up with templates, written into requirements and contracts to equipment suppliers and when the bill of material data deliverables are sent to the engineering department of the enterprise (entry point) ensuring the data location governance structure is audited and at that point accepted to start the data cleansing and purchasing setup or rejected to fix the data structure errors. Other key data elements are classification, verification, enrichment and translation before the data is setup in any of the enterprise systems.
The by-product of the well executed MDM governance plan is that once the spare parts data is processed, the cleansed record is then propagated into the purchasing system, engineering library and maintenance system. The maintenance system is fully loaded with spare parts information associated to equipment and locations of use ready for the maintenance staff to set up their tasks for the equipment maintenance and planning strategies.
Tags:data, data governance, data management, data quality, DATAForge, dataquality, Inventory Management, linkedin, manufacturing, Master Data Management, masterdata, Maximo, mdm, MRO, spare parts
Posted in Jackie Roberts | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 29th, 2010
And he continued to say “That’s the area where we would need the least amount of help given that we’ve outsourced these parts ten years ago and the low hanging fruit is not around any longer. What do you say to the outsourced scenario of the management of use, cost and inventory out of control the buying teams”?
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.
Tags:Business Intelligence, Data Cleansing, data governance, data management, Data Profiling, data quality, DATAForge, dataquality, Inventory Management, linkedin, maintenance, manufacturing, Maximo, mdm, spare parts
Posted in Jackie Roberts | No Comments »
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
Dear Andrew White,
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
Tags:Andrew White, BPO, Business Intelligence, data, Data Cleansing, data management, data quality, DATAForge, development, Gartner, linkedin, maintenance, manufacturing, masterdata, Maximo, mdm, MRO, SaaS, Software as a Service, system implementation, Technology
Posted in Jackie Roberts | 2 Comments »
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Our work encompasses a large number of spare part records, each part records flows through our data management and verification process. A large number of spare parts could be as many 250,000 to 300,000 records references to as many as 10,000 pieces of equipment for just one program. As you can imagine tracking each part record is a challenge and the complexity of maintaining data change history for your business should be evaluated when considering a PIM software deployment.
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.
Tags:BPO, Business Intelligence, data, data management, data quality, DATAForge, linkedin, maintenance, manufacturing, Maximo, mdm, MRO, spare parts, Technology
Posted in Jackie Roberts | 3 Comments »
Friday, January 8th, 2010
With the ever increasing emphasis on finding ways to reduce cost, one of the clear targets is IT and more specifically data management systems. On the surface it can seem like there is real fat to trim, and many times this is true. But it is easy to become lost in the details and eliminate or negate some of the potential savings. Some of these ideas may seem obvious but are often forgotten. The evidence is clear with missed timing and over budget issues seen.
If we’re talking about a large company then inevitably with this new system comes the monolith project with whole organizations of people and processes, projects and documentation. The compulsion is to be sure that everyone, everywhere who has any relationship to it has their input and their needs accounted for. Along the way, the cost of implementation and other peripheral indirect costs have likely negated a great deal of at least any short term savings. Not to mention the potential increase in continuous maintenance costs and loss in performance. These are a few things I’ve learned from experience and I welcome yours.
Always have a specific objective when planning for development or evaluating software to purchase that overrides all others. Start with something like a mission statement, “We need this new system for….”
Determine the Real Needs. Try to separate the “must haves” from the “nice to haves”. Bells and whistles are great but there needs to be a true benefit. Seek a balance between development time, software performance, hardware performance and user experience. I always try to put special emphasis on the user group which stands to benefit the most. Having many users who can do their job faster and more efficiently can add up to real savings versus the few users who have a special need which bogs down the project and performance.
Change is inevitable. If some requests for additional features come along, evaluate them against the mission objective. There is nothing wrong with listening and investigating ideas for project add-ons as long as the benefits outweigh the costs in time and money, but there needs to be a limit or you’ll never complete the project. Good ideas can always be implemented later if it makes sense then you’ll have the benefit of the research already done, but be quick with the research. Evaluate the impact for doing it now or waiting. Here are some good questions to start with: 1) How much more money? 2) Would this be faster/cheaper for programming to do it now versus waiting and doing a more complicated enhancement? 3) Is the impact to the users great enough to warrant it?
Know the roles. Good ideas can come from anyone. Every project must have a project champion who makes the final decisions (and live with them) and also eliminate roadblocks. You need a user advocate who has done the job and knows what it takes. Have programmers who possess both talent and vision, not just code crunchers, and listen to them.
Have good documentation, and “Good” is subject to interpretation. This is another area where the KISS principle is very often not utilized. If you have to hire ten people to sit in meetings just to maintain your documentation you’ve probably overcomplicated it and certainly increased your project cost. I try to start with these principles:
- Document the people on the project and their responsibilities. Let there be no question as to who does what.
- Everyone who has a job to do needs to understand what they need to do and have the documentation to reference.
- Keep the language simple. Focus on getting the point across. If it takes a rocket scientist to understand it you’ve failed.
- Of course, document the issues, decisions made, by whom etc. but be sensible. Document enough to cover for the “he said/she said” but content is most important. No bonus points for flash.
- Know who is supposed to have what done and when. Another obvious one here but I see too often where target dates are determined top down with little or no thought to cost or the tasks. Don’t let the tail wag the dog. Pushing hard to get the job done is fine but be realistic. Listen to the people who know before making bold predictions.
Tags:Agile, automotive, BPO, Business Intelligence, data, Data Cleansing, data management, data quality, DATAForge, dataquality, development, eOTD, ERP, linkedin, maintenance, manufacturing, masterdata, Maximo, mdm, MRO, project management, SaaS, Software as a Service, spare parts, system implementation, Technology
Posted in Carl Hamlett | No Comments »
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
With all the discussion focusing on Master Data Management and Data Quality, I always come back to these questions: How is the data structured and how is the accuracy and content completeness measured? In our business of managing the coding and verification of items and spare part information needed to keep manufacturing plants running, a structured schema of naming conventions (class), descriptive attribute standardization (properties) and verification at the sources of manufacture (coding @ source) is “key” to quality and completeness measurement. We are managing the ECCMA eOTD for the Automotive Industry Content Standards Council (AICSC) focusing on MRO naming definitions which is the foundation to a spare part description, just as a table of contents is the foundation of a text book.
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.
Tags:automotive, BPO, Business Intelligence, data, Data Cleansing, data quality, DATAForge, dataquality, eOTD, linkedin, maintenance, masterdata, Maximo, mdm, MRO, spare parts
Posted in Jackie Roberts | 1 Comment »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
I am all about the data, location management (to location and equipment), data quality, and methods to improve auto-processing, enhancing data, providing data reports and results that support our customer’s data requirements in their day to day activities.
Here is the million dollar question, this is one scenario: Over a million records in a year, legacy and new records submitted for processing from 2,500 different users and two different business processes (single submit and BOM extract). What technology would be required to intelligently automate the processing of these records to a Master Data Quality Standard?
Remember this is an on-going maintenance process, not a one time migration of non-cleansed data to a new ERP or maintenance system, nor am I referring to parsing the records into different fields of the new ERP system but ensuring that the records are verified, structured, properly attributed with full descriptions and additional information to support the business needs.
First, let’s look at the Wikipedia definition of Product Information Management (PIM) “PIM systems generally need to support multiple geographic locations, multi-lingual data, and maintenance and modification of product information within a centralized catalog to provide consistently accurate information to multiple channels in a cost-effective manner.”
Future PIM software purchasers, what evaluation methods are you using to ensure that your PIM software purchase will support the continuous update and flow of data for your entire enterprise system? Here are some items to take into consideration during your evaluation, these are all items that I ask about and would recommend that you request the answers in writing:
1. How is the change history of the data stored in the system and how easily can it be retrieved?
2. Has the performance of all modules of the software been tested and what is the base line?
3. Request references (at least three) for each module of the software.
4. What is the software product work flow and how is the data processing assigned to employees?
5. Ask to review the documentation and take the time to review; this should be a window into the complexity of the system.
6. Request the design process model and how the software company incorporates customer feedback?
7. What is the bug fix process? What is the quality system to implement a bug fix?
8. What is the software company’s philosophy on customizations at your cost?
9. How is language handled? Translations referenced to a master record?
10. If the software solution is multi module system, how are the master records referenced through
the entire solution?
11. What are the long term design strategies or road maps for each module of the software solution? Ask for the earlier road maps and the software release note to evaluate the how well the software company plans and implement updates to the systems.
And I can go on and on, the licensing; customizing and implementing software in your environment can be extremely costly and time consuming, does Caveat emptor “Let the buyer beware” work in the business world or is there a “Lemon Law” when purchasing software?
Tags:BPO, Business Intelligence, data, Data Cleansing, data quality, DATAForge, eOTD, linkedin, maintenance, manufacturing, masterdata, Maximo, mdm, Software as a Service, spare parts, Technology
Posted in Jackie Roberts | No Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
My company’s fiscal year is based on the calendar year as many others are. So, customarily we start the budget planning process in October. It is a detailed process that all of my managers and business units participate in. We usually do a few iterations before it is finalized in mid December. Sound familiar? So here’s the question, after 2009, how do you plan for 2010? Everything we knew and could usually predict with some certainty in recent years went out the window in 2009. Where do you start to plan for the next year? Is it too early to plan for growth, if not, at what pace? What certainty can we count on when developing our plans? The simple fact is, for most of us, we don’t know enough at this stage in the recovery to forecast with certainty where our businesses will be, at least, through mid next year.
So what can be done to insure profitability, or least stability, until growth returns? Control and further reduce costs. Already been there, done that? You have cut staff, benefits, wages, renegotiated prices and terms with suppliers, cut services, slowed production, cut inventories, everything you can think of. Are you sure? How well do you manage your Enterprise wide Master Data Indirect Materials / Commodities spend? What? Everything you buy that supports your facilities and the build of your products. Most large manufactures manage direct material precisely but don’t have an organized approach to their full advantage throughout the Enterprise to strategically manage indirect materials. A solution, fully implemented, provides a number of benefits:
1. “Cleansed” data, eliminating duplication of the same item coded to several different part numbers.
2. Consistent pricing for each and every part / component verified to the OEM level with lead time and warranty information. Minimizing your need to buy spare parts / commodities from distributors or your build sources.
3. Enterprise-wide material management to the department level in every Manufacturing Operation.
4. A reuse or repurposing of excess inventory in Manufacturing Engineering.
5. Able to search inventory with standardized part naming conventions and in multiple languages.
Bottom-line, an aggressive Enterprise wide well executed strategy can and will save your company significant dollars in the first 12 months of implementation. That’s 2010 folks….
Tags:BPO, Business Intelligence, data, Data Cleansing, DATAForge, dataquality, linkedin, maintenance, manufacturing, masterdata, Maximo, mdm, MRO, Software as a Service, spare parts, Technology
Posted in Art Healan | No Comments »
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
Those of us that are representatives of Master Data Management initiatives, data quality projects and the users working the processes developed by software makers have a difficult journey in front of us. It seems that for years software developers have designed cumbersome transactional data management systems that do not begin to understand real time data management and what effort it really takes to achieve an on-going Master Data Management program. I have two initial questions: Do these software companies toting one press release after another about Master Data Quality Management even understand the importance of on-going change management to a master data record? How does a business stay in front of the information flow if the software system does not dynamically adapt to the ebb and flow of data volumes and requirements? Software companies track updates and revisions to software code, data is of the same importance sometimes it is of greater importance; the number of data level updates can be monumental depending on the size of the company. Isn’t the end result of a multi-million dollar software system implementation supposed to drive efficiencies and streamline the activities to support their businesses? Cost saving and real time data management is the name of the game.
Here are a few data management tips:
1. Data needs a simple way to be imported into the system. Data comes from a number of sources so a dynamic mapping and import procedure to an internal processing area is useful for data analysis.
2. Yes, there needs to be an area to work on data before it is promoted to a Master Data Status. Software developers need to understand that data is never in a pristine state ready to be entered as a Master Data Record. Never!
3. Data processing requires a managed work flow through the system. Imagine the issue to have thousands of records for analyzing and many employees trying to manage who has what records outside the system. Just not functional work scenario.
4. Never copy data from one software module or grid to another, always reference. Cost per record to manage the data is increased every time a person needs to manually update an aspect of a record more than once.
5. Performance of the software is imperative. To really capitalize on software and technology reporting and analysis need to be done on thousands of records at a time. Time is money.
6. Provenance tracking is extremely imperative especially when “Cataloging @ Source” is the foundation to the quality of the record. Data should be identified with history: where the data originated, contact information, data and time, a revision level, file name, all associated records on the file, etc. MDM system developers, can you start to see the importance of this information?
7. Data needs to be cleansed and profiled; it is important that the software processing tools understand all aspects of the data. For instance search rules should not be so rigid that it takes an analyst manual actions to find a duplicate record because of an extra space or a slash. A worse case scenario is to take the data out of the system to work the data in excel, I am not going to even comment any more on that scenario except that it is totally unacceptable to remove data from a system to try to normalize it. Remember there is a lot of data brought into the business and the cost to manage the data is not core to the primary business, it is an indirect cost. The solution is not outsourcing to a “low cost, low skilled” worker in another country when much of the preprocessing can be done at the expense of CPU time.
8. Data changes, if you have a number of different modules in your software package what is the strategy to support aggregation of the changes to the different business units using the data? Does your software only update in one module and the other modules are in an out of sync situation? Again remember software should be designed to simplify the processes to support the business needs.
9. We live in a global economy language translation and localization of data is more important now than ever. What are the methods translate and maintain localized data?
10. Reporting and exporting of information is critical. It is a requirement to export a segment data set to send to a business customer or run a report of the activities of the work. A MDM system must be able audit data activities through the complete process of import through promotion to a master record.
I am a firm believer that software should not dictate a business process but should be designed to streamline and add efficiency to lower the cost the activity. If you are designing MDM systems, your team should include experts in data management, data quality and business process expertise with applicable experience. Businesses should not be paying for customizations to your software to be support basic 101 management of data.
Tags:BPO, Business Intelligence, data, data quality, DATAForge, dataquality, eOTD, ERP, linkedin, maintenance, manufacturing, masterdata, Maximo, MRO, Software as a Service, spare parts, Technology
Posted in Jackie Roberts | No Comments »
Friday, September 11th, 2009
October 2009 is going to be a busy and exciting month for DATAForge. We are scheduled to present at two events and hope to see you all at both
DATAForge will be presenting at the FMMUG 2009 Best Practices to be held October 11th and 12th. This years event is to be hosted by Purdue University. The mission of the Facilities Management Maximo User Group (FMMUG) is to provide a forum for Maximo users in the facilities management industry to exchange information, methods and experiences. This exchange of information is designed to optimize the use of Maximo’s capabilities. For more information visit http://www.fmmug.org.
DATAForge will also be presenting on behalf of the Automotive Industry Content Standardization council at the 10th Annual ECCMA ISO 8000 Data Quality Conference on October 27th, 28th and 29th. This years event will be held at the historic Hotel Bethlehem in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Whether you are new to data quality or a seasoned professional, this conference will provide you with a unique opportunity to discuss the latest trends and check out the latest technology. If you have an interest in improving the accuracy of your vendor, material, service or asset masters, improving the descriptions in your ERP software or buy-side or sell-side catalogs or if you are looking for solutions to data integration challenges, the ECCMA conference is the place to be! Please visit the ECCMA website for more information.
Tags:Data Cleansing, DATAForge, dataquality, linkedin, maintenance, masterdata, Maximo, Purdue, Software as a Service, spare parts, XML
Posted in Industry News | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
DATAForge LLC is scheduled to present our best practice “Electronic Structured Spare Parts Data Population of Maximo” at the Facilities Management Maximo Users Group (FMMUG) http://www.fmmug.org/ hosted by Purdue University on October 11th and 12th. Setting up spare parts and tasking in Maximo starts at the beginning of equipment design with the bill of materials parts list, the equipment asset number and plant location. Our best practice, provides a complete and automatic electronic transfer of the Bill of Material for a piece of equipment that mashes up to an equipment listing with location. The data is imported with the item records referenced to a category key of perishable spare / non spare. The perishable spares are imported to a data verification tool where analysts process and cleanse the spare part records. Once the equipment with plant location and all associated spare parts are complete we use a simple to use interface for transfer of data to Maximo, thus giving users the power to move thousands of records at a time creating Equipment, Items, Companies, Spare Parts, etc. with all of the correct fields related, to take advantage of the Maximo hyper-linking ability. The results are a fully accurate data enabled Maximo without manual part verification or data entry of equipment, items, spare parts or companies. The documented time savings for one program is two skilled trade persons for two years. Look for our best practice case study in October.
Tags:Business Intelligence, data quality, DATAForge, dataquality, maintenance, manufacturing, Maximo, mdm, MRO, Purdue, spare parts, Technology
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