Improving the Human to System Interface for MRO Material Masters

There has been a weakness since the dawn of large business systems with MRO materials business processes. Simply stated MRO material or Item master records commonly have weak or indeterminate identities. This causes challenges and mistakes and is compounded by the creation of even more weak master records as a fix. There is a significant financial and performance cost to this problem.

MRO materials are identified by their descriptions, manufacturers part numbers and material specification data (if recorded). Descriptions are commonly made ad hoc, MPNs are entered with inconsistent format rules and required specification data is not defined. Bulk Items do not have MPNS. Using the UNSPSC as an identity standard misses the whole point of unique item identity.

The simple and cost-effective solution is applying an identity standard to generate unique descriptions and specifications, plus consistent MPNs. This should be done after removing obsolete, unused, and hopelessly indeterminate items.

This is a specialist job. It requires in depth industrial systems and components, plus business system knowledge. It is a business problem, not an IT problem. Contact SPC Results.