Has the Chief Data Officer come to embrace Purchased Product Masters?
The Purchased Product master can envelope multiple master domains depending on a company’s core industry. For process manufacturers, petro chemical and Oil & Gas production sectors, purchased product masters contain the golden records for Maintenance, Repair and Operations items.
For Distributors and even Retailers, the Purchased Product masters may include those Products acquired for sale or resale.
For Service Providers, the Purchased Product master includes those items that may go into a service contract, or implementation schedule.
For Discrete manufacturers the Purchased Product master may include COTS components – B, C, and D parts that are assembled into finished product.
One common requirement is for consistent, rationalized and normalized attributes for the items in the Purchased Product master. Accurate information is certainly key. Two differentiators across the use of Purchased Product masters are the nature of the attributes and the quality measures.
These differentiators are based on the consumer of the Purchased Product master. Operations consumes maintenance, repair and spares information to streamline Process Manufacturing. Service Providers have capture teams that similarly consume Purchased Product data in creating their service offerings. There measure of accuracy and quality is based on the technical attributes associated with the items. Form, Fit and Function of the items drives the requirements.
Discrete Manufacturing has two consuming groups – Operations for Maintenance and repairs of the manufacturing equipment, and Engineering – who may rely on COTS components for subassembly, bill or material input to their design process. Operations have identical requirements to Process Manufacturing, Engineering requirements for B, C, and D parts are 90% similar.
How these consuming functions measure data quality differs. How the CDO measures and manages Purchased Product master data depends on the role they came from and just as importantly the role that this data plays in the organization.
To further complicate matters, the source of the data to begin with often helps drive the role of the CDO, the measure of quality, and the team / organization responsible for data quality and its measurement.
What is your organization’s take on metrics for Purchased product masters?
Recommended Reads:
Blog – Material (Item) Master Data’s impact on Procurement Organizations
White Paper – MRO Master Data Management for Enhanced Maintenance Performance
White paper – Managing Material Master Data For Enhancing Procurement Efficiency

Arthur Raguette

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