Paving the Way to Optimized Inventory
Most companies with large inventory lose track of what they have in stock because of the sheer volume of items and transactions. Studies have shown that companies with more than 10,000 line items of stock, who have never seriously addressed Supply Cataloguing Standards, will have up to 1500 duplicated items. That is a lot of capital tied up in unnecessary stock.
Material cataloguing is a means of unambiguously describing materials. The process is called data standardization or data cleansing and comprises 5 simple steps.
A data cleansing project should include implementing good business processes to manage your catalogue. These processes should be supported by training and introducing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor data quality.
Some benefits such as holding costs and procurement costs are easily quantified. Others such as minimizing time spent locating the correct item or the time and money wasted by purchasing or issuing an incorrect item are more difficult to measure but are just as important to organisations conscious of cost containment and service standards. A high-quality material catalogue delivers bottom-line benefits throughout the organisation.
Inventory Control - Minimising stock duplication reduces inventory holdings, saves storage space and reduces material handling.
Purchasing - A complete and technically sound description reduces research, eliminates the re-keying of purchasing details, and ensures the correct item is bought. Consolidating and categorizing stock items makes for easier identification of candidate suppliers for strategic purchasing agreements. This reduces overall purchasing costs, through increased order sizes on fewer items at contracted prices. It is also easier to identify and replace superseded items.
Maintenance - Maintenance engineers are able to easily select the correct items and avoid searching for sources of an item that is already stocked.
Engineering - Technically sound descriptive information facilitates the use of bills-of-materials for construction or maintenance purposes.
Warehouse Customers - An easy-to-use catalogue gives users confidence that required items can be easily found.
We provide flexible, low-cost supply cataloguing services. Mitrais’ cataloguing team uses the same type of software tools as those used by leading multinational companies to create and cleanse catalogue data for spare parts and other material items. Our data management tools use global standard dictionary templates, such as Auslang, UNSPSC, NATO, ECCMA and Maximo. We have many years of experience performing cataloguing and catalogue cleansing projects for multi-national clients.
Cataloguing – creating a catalogue from raw data, electronic or paper-based
Catalogue Cleansing – processing the data in your catalogue to any of the 4 standard levels.
Training – public or private training courses covering:
- Cataloguing Principles
- Advanced Cataloguing
Catalogue Assessment – analysing the data in your catalogue to determine its condition and potential benefits to be gained by a cleansing project.
Business Process Review – working with your Cataloguing staff to develop procedures, controls and KPIs to effectively manage your catalogue.