I have earlier written about my Right the First Time enrolment at the local fitness club and how I geekingly are using the dashboard on the workout equipment to follow my Fitness Data.
But it is probably (or actually certainly) too early to talk about the term “six pack” related to these efforts.
So let’s talk about a “six pack” related to master data management.
We may for example have a look at “a six pack of Carlsberg lager”.
Sometimes you may ask how many different products you are handling in a master data hub. In answering that question we here may come up with a lot of different numbers all being a Perfect Wrong Answer.
The real world isn’t flat. When dealing with product master data we certainly need to see the world in hierarchies as:
- Carlsberg lager as such is a product with some attributes and some relations to the customers liking this product or not.
- The product may be brewed in the original country of origin (Denmark) or at lot of other facilities around the world, thus making it a different product per supplier with respect to some attributes.
- As a customer you buy the product in a certain packaging like a six pack of cans in a given size with a given label.
The bottom level presented here is what in data management terms is identified as a Stock Keeping Unit (SKU).
Oh, and consuming the last “six pack” is probably (or actually certainly) not good for achieving the first mentioned “six pack”.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 