Product Catalogue
The main types of master data for industrial enterprises are product catalogs of manufactured products, spare parts, materials and other types of resources. This data is used in various enterprise systems: ERP, procurement portal, MES, PLM, CMMS, EAM, accounting systems, etc. When integrating these systems, it is necessary to establish a correspondence between the objects of the product catalogs used in them. This is best done by building a single corporate product catalog in the MDM system.
It is also possible to exchange such data with external organizations: for example, when transferring technical specifications and RFPs for purchased products to suppliers, or when processing received technical and commercial proposals. Since each supplier can use their own product catalog, different from the one adopted by the company (if the enterprise already has one), the task of comparing product list items between external sources and the company's own catalog arises.
In both cases, the main task is to automate the comparison of product items between different catalogs, which can contain hundreds of thousands of product names. To solve this problem, you can use the tool for extracting semantic characteristics from text, which is part of the EKG Platform. This tool converts text strings like "Engine 3200 kW 500 rpm SDN3-1776" into structured sets of characteristics: power = 3200 kW, rotation speed 500 rpm, class "Engine", model SDN3-1776. Having received product characteristics from different sources, it is easy to set up the process of automatic comparison of items with manual confirmation if the degree of coincidence is below the specified level.
EKG Platform allows you to create hierarchical equipment catalogs, specify a set of attributes for each class, and use catalogs of units of measurement of physical quantities. Each product can be included in several classes according to one or more hierarchies; the attribute composition of product properties is inherited from all classes to which it belongs.
The functions of cleaning (normalization), checking (validation), and combining (consolidation) of data will help to build a single, reference product catalogue, which can be used to exchange data between all information systems of the enterprise. EKG Platform allows you to implement a centralized process of entering and coordinating elements of the product catalogue, synchronizing the data of this directory with all applications.
Assets: technical locations and equipment units
Another frequently encountered task of industrial enterprises is the creation of a single set of data on technical locations and equipment units. This task may arise when creating an asset management system, when implementing maintenance and repair management (CMMS) systems, resource management, etc. A single asset catalog is also necessary for creating various monitoring systems, an enterprise situation center. Since asset data is important for many systems, it is advisable to build their catalog in the MDM system and synchronize it with all application solutions. On the MDM side, you can implement the process of making changes to the asset structure and distributing the agreed changes to all applications.
Asset data must necessarily include their structural and functional relationships. Structural links describe the relative positions of assets: for example, unit X is located in workshop Y, pump P is part of unit X, sensor T is installed on pump P. Positional codes of technical locations are often used, which reflect the position of each technical location in the structural hierarchy of enterprise assets - such codes can be automatically generated and verified in MDM. Functional links describe the mutual dependencies of technical locations that arise during enterprise operation: transformer T1 supplies electricity to unit X, the working fluid from unit X enters tank R. Describing such links helps solve problems of predicting failure chains, assessing the impact of incidents, building optimization models to determine optimal equipment operating modes, and saving energy and resources.
Information about equipment units includes inventory numbers, passport and operating values of technical characteristics of specific devices, service life, technical condition indices. It is mandatory to store the history of installation of equipment units in technical locations, information on passing inspections and examinations, performing scheduled and emergency repairs. This data can also be copied from the CMMS to the MDM system, for example, to make it available for use in data analysis and machine learning tools.
For many industries, there are reference information models, such as the CIM model for electric power enterprises (IEC 61970, IEC 61968 and other standards). The MDM system built on the EKG Platform makes it easy to import and use such models, as it implements the ontological modeling specifications on which these standards are based.
What industrial enterprise data should be stored in MDM?
Any industrial or mining enterprise is a huge financial and economic complex with a large volume and variety of data. The ability to solve optimization problems, use artificial intelligence tools and organize data-driven management depends on how synchronized these data are between different sources and how much they can be trusted in terms of quality. The higher the level of enterprise management tasks that need to be solved based on data, the higher the requirements for the composition, quality and degree of integration of this data. An MDM system of an industrial enterprise may contain:
- Catalogues of the products, items, materials
- Information on assets – technical locations and units of equipment
- Information on the enterprise's counterparties – its suppliers, dealers, consumers
- Organizational structure and personnel information.
If your enterprise has tasks for integrating and processing these types of data, we will be happy to provide consulting services and implement an MDM system. The creation of a single, reference set of information of the listed types will allow the implementation of rational management practices based on decision support based on data analysis.
