IHS Intermat Description Standardization Services

IHS Intermat is the most comprehensive solution for MRO catalog management, refined through decades of experience cleansing and standardizing MRO item descriptions for thousands of plants worldwide.

IHS Intermat offers a broad range of services and software to cleanse, standardize, enrich and maintain item descriptions and material master data for maintenance, repair and operations (MRO). These services range from identifying potentially duplicate inventory to verifying and enriching data on an item-by-item basis.

Each project implementation and scope of work is based upon the state of your current MRO catalog, future business needs and enterprise resource planning (ERP) and enterprise asset management (EAM) requirements.

Since 1978, IHS Intermat has continually refined a process to cleanse, standardize and enrich MRO item and material descriptions. This service-based approach, supported by industry proven templates and tools, has been used to process over 50 million SKUs for thousands of industrial and process plants worldwide, far more than any other service or software provider.

Tangible & Sustainable Benefits
Many industrial and process organizations have multiple plants and tens of thousands of MRO items/SKUs. IHS Intermat Description Standardization Services has enabled our customers to realize significant savings by:

• eliminating excess inventory
• lowering procurement costs
• improving plant and equipment throughput
• increasing employee productivity
• achieving maximum benefits from ERP/EAM systems

Rapid ROI
The average return on investment (ROI) on cataloging projects for our customers occurs as follows:

• Payback period
  3-6 months from project completion
• First year return
  150-350% depending upon the customer/industry

There are typically three phases to each client project:

Phase I: First Pass

Phase I utilizes AutoCon™, our proprietary conversion software. AutoCon creates Standard Modifier Dictionary (SMD™) formatted descriptions by identifying and extracting nouns, modifiers and characteristics from your unstructured, free-form text.

Phase II: Data Standardization

Catalog data, having been first processed with AutoCon, is reviewed, validated and standardized by our materials analysts with respect to spelling, punctuation and presentation. Then statistical sampling and specific item-by-item review ensure consistency and accuracy. Phase II services are performed using the SMD, Struxure® and a variety of internal proprietary software tools. No new data is collected during this process.

Phase III: Data Enrichment

Phase III enriches your item descriptions by collecting additional characteristic value data supported by the SMD but not available from your source data. In-house research is done by our materials analysts, using references such as our internal library of manufacturer/vendor catalogs, Internet sources and the IHS databases. IHS Intermat also provides its own experienced staff of materials analysts to perform on-site support - physical inspection of the materials in your warehouses and storerooms, when the item data is not available through hardcopy and/or online references.

Duplicate Inventory Identification

IHS Intermat provides you with two listings of potential duplicate catalog items. This series of reports helps you identify and eliminate duplicate and functionally equivalent inventory as early as 2-3 weeks after project start-up.

Maintain Your Own Catalog or Let IHS Do It For You.

Hands-on training and associated learning materials are provided for use with all IHS Intermat software tools in individual and group settings. Training is also provided for the SMD, cataloging methodology, field data acquisition and ongoing maintenance and enhancement of the electronic catalog. IHS instructors teach training courses at both an IHS training facility and your locations.

IHS also provides services to maintain your MRO catalog for you on a real-time basis based upon your schedule and system requirements. IHS will perform any additions, changes, and enhancements to your MRO catalog data.

• Catalog Maintenance Services Information Sheet (PDF)
• Description Standardization Services Sheet (PDF)
• MRO Data Optimization with SMD and AutoCon (White Paper) (PDF)