Bad MRO Material Master Identities are a Root Cause of Your Business Process Challenges. A Fixable Problem

In a long career implementing and improving SAP SCM business processes in Oil & Gas, Pipelines, Utilities and Transportation companies, the number one consistently observed problem is poorly identified MRO material masters. Material master identity consists of the item descriptions, the manufacturer and manufacturer part number fields and classification data that support material identification. This presentation is meant to raise the profile of the topic without going into detailed solutions. It is aimed at a general level to all practitioners that make use of maintenance or SCM business processes that use materials. The presentation is software agnostic. These challenges are found in shops running SAP, Oracle, JDE, Maximo…

Topics: • Introduction (discussion applies to asset intensive industry and the MRO materials records used in their supporting business processes)  • Generalized view of the current state and how we arrived here. • Structured identification taxonomy – standards and why coherence in the structure is important. • Material master lifecycles are often not considered- beginning, middle, end. • Conclusions: This is not an insolvable problem or one that necessarily demands another $$$ system implementation. It exists only because it has been invisible

  Originally Presented at AB Chapter Online Symposium (Part 1 of 7)  05/28/2020  as "The Story of My Journey With MRO Material Master Identities."

  Presented MainTrain 2020  09/15/2020