IHS White Paper:  Cleaning Up a Direct Materials Database

Accurate, reliable information is the cornerstone of productivity, as well as a means to maintain compliance with industry standards and regulations. Compliance initiates organization in order to present the most accurate information. However maintaining this information is not only time-consuming, but also costly. According to the research firm Gartner, “More than 25 percent of critical data Fortune 1,000 databases are inaccurate or incomplete.”

Many companies fall victim to the inability to effectively maintain information in order to retain compliance with industry standards. Data quality issues are seemingly the culprit that lies not only between compliance, but also financial and time-saving benefits.

Resolution of data issues can be rectified by means of identifying areas of organization and risk assessment. Cleansing, standardization, and enrichment of direct parts data lay the foundation for a myriad of opportunities across the supply chain and beyond:

• Effective technology implementation
• Inventory management
• Strategic sourcing
• Strategic procurement practices
• Data synchronization
• Enterprise visibility
• Environment compliance

This paper discusses the appropriate steps needed to effectively cleanse data storage to yield cost savings and contribute toward return on investment, as well as further steps needed to clean up a direct materials database. This paper contains the direct parts data cleansing process:

• Perform an initial review of the data, which identifies potential duplicates and provides and overview of data quality.
• Standardized the data and to extract as much information as possible from internal source databases.
• Enrich the data with as much information as possible.

With data that is more accurate, complete and consistent, engineers and procurement professionals can readily find parts. Having the blueprint for successful implementation of cleansing a direct materials database is one thing, however the actual process can be daunting when performed by internal resources only able to commit a percentage of their time to the process. An external source has the ability to provide a proactive approach to the clean up of a direct materials database.

Related topics:

• Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
• VMI
• Collaborative, Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR)
• Return on Investment (ROI)
• ERP system
• EAM system
• The DataLens system
• CatalogXpress
• Fasteners eCatalog
• 4DOnline Parts Universe
• 4DOnline BOM Optimizer
• Haystack
• Specs and Standards