A common definition of quality is “conformance to requirements”, meaning the thing being assessed for quality does what it is intended to do. To consider what quality looks like in MRO material masters we need to know what we need the record to accomplish.
The purpose of an MRO material /item record is to represent a real-world item needed to operate or maintain a physical asset being supported in the ERP/CMMS system. We plan and execute business processes with the business system and use MRO material master records as digital twin stand ins. MRO processes include sourcing, procurement, warehousing, maintenance planning and execution, warranty, and reliability work
There are two main quality attributes to consider. First, and most important is identity. For the MRO record to be useful and not harmful to our MRO business processes, it must clearly identify the thing it represents, the more challenging part of item identity quality is the identity must be consistently structured with similar items, so it is comparable. This supports both catalogue rationalization (removing duplicates and indeterminates) and maintaining the integrity of one record to one real-world item in the catalogue when future item additions are considered. This is a focus of SPC Results.
Item identity is the prime quality of MRO records because of its higher potential to harm MRO business process results. Many MRO catalogues contain 20 to 50% more records than needed. Most of these extra records are non-detected duplicates and indeterminate items caused by poor identity standards. They cause significant chaos and harm in business processes. SPC Results guides creation of an enterprise specific MRO Material Master Identity Standard including an item identity taxonomy to provide structured comparability.
The second attribute of MRO material master quality is business parameter accuracy. Business software pulls material master record field values into transactions. There can be dozens to hundreds of fields used in MRO records. Examples include assigned Buyer, minimum stock level, replenishment lead time, storage bin id, and the code for determining G/L accounts in financial transactions. Review and remediation of business parameter quality is best done after the catalogue is rationalized to a one for one record to real-world item standard.
Item identity quality can be measured if there is an enterprise MRO Item Identity Taxonomy. If the identity attributes in an item conform to its identity template (an element of the Identity Taxonomy), then it is a quality record. The item identity quality score is the percentage of conforming items. A simple yet powerful measure.