How to prevent a computerized product data mess?
Data is taking a central stage in everything that businesses do these days. You can hear about digital strategies and digital transformation every day today. So, let’s bring computers and solve the problem of data mess. Not so fast. For most companies, bringing computers actually ends up with not solving a problem, but creating a computerized mess. How to prevent it and what indicators will tell you that you’re moving from data mess to computerized data mess? I’m continuously hearing top managers, engineers, procurement, and other departments of manufacturing companies speaking with growing concerns about the data and their ability to perform their work. According to many people, I’m talking continuously, here are 5 concerns they have about the data.
1– One Crucial Spreadsheet. There is one important spreadsheet that collects a very important set of information that is critical for many people and represents centralized storage of data about products. This data is managed by multiple people and departments. The data can be outdated quickly if it is not updated. At the same time, updating this data manually requires too much time and effort. You hope this Excel will be secured with the top priority.
2- Data Traceability Mess. Each project is represented by an Excel file that includes components, assemblies, and corresponding data such as quantity, suppliers, cost, and other information. The person who created it is your data mastermind (or Chief Excel Officer), but there is no easy way to trace data relationships back to the original – design data, additional materials, type of information cost, suppliers. You hope the questions about traceability won’t be asked every, because they are hard to answer.
3- Parts, components, materials are listed multiple times differently in multiple Excels. The data identification is a mess. You might have multiple projects Excels with the same components named differently. The data was entered by different people at different times. Each Excel by itself is important because it represents a critical piece of product data, suppliers data, cost, and other information. However, the task of consolidating these multiple Excels together is overwhelming, so you continue to go into this vicious cycle again and again.
4- There are no measurable KPIs to quantify product design, cost, suppliers, procurement. It is easy for companies to quantify sales numbers. Most companies’ sales numbers are known. However, to connect this information to product, design, suppliers, cost of materials and other information is not.
