I spend a lot of time analyzing the product data quality, missing data elements, system accessibility because the data elements are impossible to pull out of the system or not collected to support our clients’ enterprise requirements for purchasing, engineering and maintenance decisions. I have to admit, I am always astonished by what I see (or don’t see) and the time and cost to pull data from a system. The reality is the data entered in these systems and the systems themselves are considered a support function (indirect or non-product activity) and not the core revenue generating stream for the business however the data is the life support of BI, accurate and available data is critical for smart and efficient business decisions. The missing gap in most business intelligence programs is a foundational flaw, referred to as data integrity and data quality or the lack thereof.

A business has two options, augment their BI decisions with a data quality scoring model, IDHS, a simple example “I am confident that our inventory budget should be 1 million dollars this year, based on the IDHS (+/- 30%) the actual budget could range from 700,000 to 1.3 million.”  The easiest reality is to budget the 1.3 million, with the plan to come in under budget, .3 million provides a safe cushion. This also alleviates the over budget spending and the tedious tasks of re-budgeting or canceling other important initiatives mid quarter / year.

The other option is to incorporate a structured and standardized Master Data Management process with Data Governance to collect, manage, cleanse (legacy / new data), enrich and disseminate information to the various systems. The goal is to create one master record set to ensure that decisions are based on accurate and complete data sets to implement meaningful BI reporting and analytics.

The results of data quality improvements are because of the requirements and processes of MDM. My definition is “An MDM program includes the Data Governance to define data requirements (structure, format and content), and the data processes to manage data activities such as collecting (extraction of BOM data or the data request web form), evaluating, matching (auto and mismatch), structuring, verifying and enriching to minimum data requirements, tracking history of change and data use, quality-assurance, reporting and distributing data (MAXIMO, ORACLE, SAP or another client’s systems) throughout an enterprise to ensure consistency and control. The MDM program will also include an on-going data maintenance process to manage data updates for this information.”

The following elements of data quality should be part of the governance program for your master data. This is critical to support a global enterprise. The discussions and metrics should include:

Accuracy: We intellectually understand the meaning of accuracy. An email address is either right or wrong, however in the product information world it can be a little more complex, this is where data governance is instrumental. The same spare part can be purchase from the manufacturer (one part number) or maybe a supplier (another part number)? A part number can be many different versions; for instance, a master org record is setup with a part number to purchase safety gloves, except one part number can’t buy you safety gloves; you must include the size as a description element in order to purchase. The result of an inaccurate glove record is you may receive all small gloves, but you really wanted large or you may not receive any gloves. Different manufacturers and suppliers have different ordering and purchasing rules.

Standardization: Is absolutely critical to BI reporting. Standardization is the map to how data is entered, referenced and stored to support ease of data access. The data elements should include classification naming, attributes, part numbers including formats, unit of measures, manufacturer and supplier names, addresses, web urls, relationships to parent companies and so forth.

Structured to support multiple uses: If you have one master organization and are only concerned with purchasing systems then structure may not be a concern, but to a global enterprise with multi-systems, the structure of use is extremely important as the data is disseminated to maintenance or inventory systems. In a purchasing system a ’Bearing, Ball’, part number ‘12345’ should only be set up once but in an “end use” structured environment, that ’Bearing, Ball’ is referenced to many pieces of equipment located  and used on other equipment and in other plants, it is also listed in engineering drawings, etc. If the multiple use structure is set up correct you can report “where used” for inventory sharing, internal purchasing programs supporting reduction in inventory.

Completeness: Having all data elements entered into the system required for the safe and efficient use of each item. If your data set has some missing prices and a report is provided the value of the inventory, obviously the report is inaccurate. The governance requirements include minimum required data elements. In the world of product data, the process may require a special speedy set up for a critical item that is urgent, however the MDM processes includes going back to acquire the missing information.

Accessibility: The ability to pull information from a system is the foundation of reporting. This is a continual struggle when I am working with a new client. I often ask the questions, “Is the expertise available to be able to query and pull data as needed from existing systems?”, “Is the data stored parametrically or as concatenated text fields?”, “is the table structure extremely complicated?” Accessing the businesses information and providing the ability to slice / dice the information critical to BI.

In this fast moving, big data intense world of collecting and storing information for businesses, the reporting and analytics to enable meaningful decision making is critical, so I ask the question “What does data have to do with business intelligence? EVERYTHING”

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.

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?

Collaboration and co-opetition are at the base of this impressive growth. “We know that on a going forward basis, our interdependence as an industry will have a significant impact on our ability to manage the recovery and sustain profitable growth,” remarked J. Scot Sharland, executive director.

AIAG’s membership actively engages in numerous initiatives, to facilitate industry consensus and resolve issues via the adoption of common business practices (e.g. engineering, logistics, packaging, quality, environmental health and safety, health care, etc.) and interoperable business systems counting application-to-application (A2A), plant-to-business (P2B) and business-to-business (B2B).

By collaborating with competitors in a neutral environment, members are able to identify inefficiencies in business processes. Initiatives are then developed and implemented at AIAG, by member companies, to save the industry millions of dollars and drive rework, error and scrap out of the global automotive supply chain.

New member companies joining the AIAG family in 2009 include:
Alta Mfg. Co.
AmeriPlate Inc.
Anderson Cook
Autodesk Inc.
Bellwright Industries, LLC
Bianchi Public Relations
Borg Indak, Inc
BridgeSpeak
Burlington Technologies Inc.
California Manufacturing Technology Consulting
CHEP USA Inc
Circuit Works Corporation
Colonial Diversified Polymer Products, LLC
Corporation for International Business
D & R Technology, LLC
DATAForge, LLC
Detroit Products International, LLC
Ditech, Inc.
Durapart Industries AS
Edicom Corporation
Epic Technologies
Fontaine International, Inc
Foster and Associates, Inc.
Francis Tuttle Technology Center
GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc.
Huntington Quality Associates, Inc
I.D. Systems, Inc.
INA Industria Nacional De Autopartes, A.C.
International Rectifier Corp.
International TechneGroup, Inc.
Johnson Controls, Inc.
KPA, LLC
M.K. Chambers Company
Magni-Power Company
Metaldyne
Methode Electronics, Inc.
Michigan State University
Microsoft Corporation
Monbat PLC
Morbern Inc.
Mueller Impacts Company
Neuman Aluminum
Nissan Motor Manufacturing Corporation USA
North Carolina State University Industrial Extension Service
Oracle Corporation
ORBIS Corporation
Orick Tool & Die, Inc.
Panasonic Automotive Systems of America
Paramount Group
Plexus Corporation
Polymer Inc
Q&A Chemical Co., Ltd.
Qdos Flexcircuits BDN. BHD
Quality House, S.C.
Radar Industries, Inc.
Resource International LLC
RF-IDI, LLC
RSJ Technical Consulting
SEEBURGER, Inc.
Sinclair Community College
Symbolic Systems, Inc.
System Seals, Inc.
Tecnologico De Monterrey
TFT Global Inc. – Woodstock
THRU-U.COM INC
Tieco International (Aust) P/L
Trademerit Corp.
Unicell Limited
Universidad Iberoamericana, A.C.
Vertare, LLC
Vitec LLC
Vogelsang Corporation
Watlow
Williams Controls, Inc.

Links:
http://www.aiag.org

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.

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:

1. Document the people on the project and their responsibilities. Let there be no question as to who does what.
2. Everyone who has a job to do needs to understand what they need to do and have the documentation to reference.
3. Keep the language simple. Focus on getting the point across. If it takes a rocket scientist to understand it you’ve failed.
4. 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.
5. 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.

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.

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….

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.

The same logic of presenting every imaginable, option, configuration, button, screen, step, radio button, piece of information has been applied to many software packages. You would think in a large organization, simplicity would be king…not so…I am currently consulting with a large multi-national organization to help in the deploymentof a centralized system to house all product information for their MRO or Maintenance, Repair and Operations. Which, in practical terms, means that they are centralizing their databases of information required to order, maintain, and use any item that can potentially be purchased but does not go into their final product.

Not a small task by any measuring stick. Master Data Management, data cleansing, data normalization, intra-organization de-duplication are on the radar of most if not all large businesses. The most important part of the process is to choose application(s) that are the best fit for your organization, not the one that is made or owned by the largest company, and not the one who has the most clever marketing, not the one that appears in the latest report by the best marketed research firm (think about the ratings agencies who rated toxic subrime mortgage backed securities AA or AAA)

The software that was chosen xxxxxx (contractually obligated not to say the name) has one main screen for entering most of the data related to any given item, this screen contains no less than 50 possible fields in tabular form. There are also 3 additional screen each with less than 50 fields for data entry, these subsequent screens are used to associate ansillary information such as pictures to an item. The screens that DATAForge uses – one screen with 25 or less (depending on the type of data). The remainder of the information is gathered organically and seamlessly based on the way the application is used and who is using it.

When we design a solution the question on each team members mind is “How can I make this easier and faster to do for the end user?”

When evaluating an application force the vendor to show you how it will be used (not tell you), make them show you their solution is faster and more efficient. Lots of options, inputs, and fields are not always the users friend.

What is your Life Cycle Data Management Strategy?

1) Drawing Libraries – The items in the library need to be cleansed and profiled to a classification schema. The schema requires standard naming conventions and technical descriptions. The schema can be designed within your company, priority purchased from another vendor or you can opt for using an open classification dictionary for public use such as the ECCMA eOTD.

2) Common Component Listing – provides a listing of preferred components that support the inventory management strategies for your organization. All equipment designers and builder are required to use the common components identified. Note: common components are set up in the drawing libraries.

3) Spare Part Acquisition – Place the components on purchasing contacts at the beginning of design, this will facilitate the ease of spare parts planning and purchasing. An item on contract provides purchasing the data needed to run analytical algorithms in order to better negotiate pricing organization wide. If the item is set up accurately to a standardized classification dictionary with technical descriptions only one time the whole organization can realize the benefits of the Life Cycle Data Management Strategy.

4) Inventory – supports optimal inventory management by promoting the ability to plan stocking levels and strategies with nearby facilities. Think about the implementation of spare parts sharing or an internal purchase first program. The most important requirement is the standardization or normalization of the data; the part needs to be classified only one-way and should be shown in every system the same way.

5) Maintenance –The use of standardized components coupled with a data management strategy allows the organization to streamline the number of different components used to serve the same function on different equipment. Also reducing the number of parts in inventory and maintenance management tasks.

Life Cycle Data Management Plans starts with component standardization and cleansing the data in your equipment drawing libraries and all downward systems including maintenance. This strategy avoids duplicate inventory items and at the same time promotes an internal purchase philosophy that puts a priority on inventory sharing before issuing supplier purchase orders. Standardizing inventory with information elements such as predefined stocking levels, identification of critical inventory, functionally equivalent item identification and purchasing analytics as well as enhanced vendor management are all necessary steps for a manufacturing business to remain competitive in today’s world of lean low overhead manufacturing.

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 11^th and 12^th. 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.

What about the other costs? What does it cost a global manufacturer the lack of visibility of the “spend” or the inability to manage vendors selling like or equivalent products?

It’s estimated that process failures and bad information cost $1.5 trillion or more in the U.S. alone.[i]

How would a buyer know that these are the same parts? Two different manufacturer names and two different part numbers; this scenario will cause duplication in a purchasing system. The result is the additional work of creating and maintaining two contracts but also cause downstream effects such as excess inventory with more than 1 stocking location, lack of a volume purchase or a global view.

 Question: Is the answer to always to confirm the actual manufacturer and set up supplier references?