IoT

4 Key Aspects of Master Data Management in Manufacturing

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

Master Data Management (MDM) has a lot of common considerations regardless of the industry where MDM will be blueprinted and implemented and then there are some key aspects to consider specifically for a given industry.

For manufacturing I have found these 4 aspects as key areas when making the roadmap and deciding on Master Data Management architecture principles:

● The impact of Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
● Balancing global and local
● Mix of implementation styles
● Direct and indirect customers

The impact of Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)

More and more produced products are smart devices. This goes for household appliances, power tools, cars and much more. Thus, they are part of the Internet of Things (IoT) meaning that each instance of the product (each produced thing) has its own identity, with a specific configuration, with specific ownership and caretaker-ship and each thing is producing streams of data. This will considerably extend the reach of Data Management and will require your Master Data Management to be open towards business partners.

For manufacturing the producing equipment is also smart devices with a lot of data involved and this can only be sustainable maintained and governed by a master data approach. This realm is sometimes called Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) which is a facet of Industry 4.0.

Balancing global and local

In manufacturing you can only centralize master data management to a certain degree. There are manufacturing and adjacent processes that are best kept localized due to essential variances in product characteristics, geographic differences and other specializations in line of work.

Therefore, finding the right balance between global and local is a crucial point in blueprinting your manufacturing data management solution, reaching the best fit Master Data Management architecture and building the overarching data governance framework.

Mix of implementation styles

For the same reasons you will not be able to follow a full-blown centralized Master Data Management implementation style. You will need to go for a consolidation Master Data Management style but not necessarily for all data domains and subdomains. You can mix these two styles in what can be seen as a co-existence Master Data Management style.

Direct and indirect customers

In manufacturing your direct customers are typically distributors and retailers who have the end-user customers as their direct customers. However, it happens that you have a business scenario where the same end-users also become your direct customer as a manufacturer. Also, you as a manufacturer for many reasons will benefit from loyally share the end-user customer data with your business partners.

Your Master Data Management implementation should cater for providing a true 360-degree view on customers in this complex business setup.

Learn more

One good resource for a deeper dive into the Master Data Management Architecture considerations in manufacturing is a presentation by my long-time data management peer Magnus Wernersson and Pekka Tamminen of Solita. Find the YouTube video here provided by Semarchy: Volvo Cars – Data Centricity & Digital Innovations with MDM Architecture.

4 Concepts in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital Business Capabilities that will Shape MDM

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Some months ago, Gartner published the latest Hype Cycle for Digital Business Capabilities.

The hype cycle includes 4 concepts that in my mind will shape the future of Master Data Management (MDM) and data management in all. These are:

  • Industrie 4.0
  • Business Ecosystems
  • Digital Twin
  • Machine Customer

Industrie 4.0

You will find Industrie 4.0 near the trough of disillusionment almost ready to climb the slope of enlighten. Several of the recent MDM blue prints I have worked with have Industrie 4.0 as an overarching theme.

Industrie 4.0 is about using intelligent devices in manufacturing and thus closely connected to the term Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The impact of industry 4.0 is across the whole supply chain encompassing not only product manufacturing companies but also for example product merchants and product service providers.

With intelligent devices in the supply chain product MDM will evolve from handling data about product models to handle data about each instance of a product.

Business Ecosystems

The concept of business ecosystems has just passed the peak of inflated expectations.

In a modern business environment, no organization can do everything – or even most things – themselves. Therefore, any enterprise needs to partner with other organizations when working on new digital powered business models.

This also calls for increasing sharing of data, including master data, with business partners. This leads to the rise of interenterprise MDM, which by the way is at about the same position in the Hype Cycle for Data Analytics and MDM.

An example of interenterprise data sharing is Product Data Syndication.

Digital Twin

On the climbing side of the peak of inflated expectations we find the concept of a digital twin.

A digital twin is a virtual representation of a real-world entity such as an asset, person, organization, or process. This fits somehow with what MDM is doing which traditionally has been providing virtual descriptions of customers, suppliers, and products.

With the digital twin flavour, you can sharpen and extend MDM in two ways:

  • Have a more real-world on customers and suppliers by looking at those has roles of business partners along with handling many other external and internal organizational entities
  • Putting more asset types than direct products under the MDM umbrella with improved data governance as a result

Machine Customers

A bit further down the climbing side of the peak you will see the concept of the machine customer.

The expectation is that more and more buying tasks will be automated so there will be no human interaction in the bulk of purchasing processes.

This will only be possible if the products involved at those who sell them are digitally described in sufficient details and categorized the same way on the selling and buying side.

This seems like a job for Master Data Management and the adjacent Product Information Management (PIM) discipline where the buying side needs the right capabilities not only for direct trading products but also indirect supplies.

Also, the concept of augmented MDM will play a role here by applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the MDM and PIM side of enabling the machine customer.

The Full Report

You can download the full hype cycle report including the complete visual cycle from the parsionate website: Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital Business Capabilities.

IoT and Business Ecosystem Wide MDM

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

Two of the disruptive trends in Master Data Management (MDM) are the intersection of Internet of Things (IoT) and MDM and business ecosystem wide MDM (aka multienterprise MDM).

These two trends will go hand in hand.

IoT and Ecosystem Wide MDM

The latest MDM market report from Forrester (the other analyst firm) was mentioned in the post Toward the Third Generation of MDM.

In here Forrester says: “As first-generation MDM technologies become outdated and less effective, improved second generation and third-generation features will dictate which providers lead the pack. Vendors that can provide internet-of-things (IoT) capabilities, ecosystem capabilities, and data context position themselves to successfully deliver added business value to their customers.”

This saying is close to me in my current job as co-founder and CTO at Product Data Lake as told in the post Adding Things to Product Data Lake.

In business ecosystem wide MDM business partners collaborate around master data. This is a prerequisite for handling asset master data involved in IoT as there are many parties involved included manufacturers of smart devices, operators of these devices, maintainers of the devices, owners of the devices and the data subjects these devices gather data about.

In the same way forward looking solution providers involved with MDM must collaborate as pondered in the post Linked Product Data Quality.

Five Disruptive MDM Trends

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As any other IT enabled discipline Master Data Management (MDM) continuously undergo a transformation while adopting emerging technologies. In the following I will focus on five trends that seen today seems to be disruptive:

Disruptive MDM

MDM in the Cloud

According to Gartner the share of cloud-based MDM deployment has increased from 19% in 2017 year to 24 % in 2018 and I am sure that number will increase again this year. But does it come as SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) or IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)? And what about DaaS (Data as a Service). Learn more in the post MDM, Cloud, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and DaaS.

Extended MDM Platforms

There is a tendency on the Master Data Management (MDM) market that solutions providers aim to deliver an extended MDM platform to underpin customer experience efforts. Such a platform will not only handle traditional master data, but also reference data, big data (as in data lakes) as well as linking to transactions. Learn more in the post Extended MDM Platforms.

AI and MDM

There is an interdependency between MDM and Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI and Machine Learning (ML) depends on data quality, that is sustained with MDM, as examined in the post Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Data Quality. And you can use AI and ML to solve MDM issues as told in the post Six MDM, AI and ML Use Cases.

IoT and MDM

The scope of MDM will increase with the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) as reported in the post IoT and MDM. Probably we will see the highest maturity for that first in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), also referred to as Industry 4.0, as pondered in the post IIoT (or Industry 4.0) Will Mature Before IoT.

Ecosystem wide MDM

Doing Master Data Management (MDM) enterprise wide is hard enough. But it does not stop there. Increasingly every organization will be an integrated part of a business ecosystem where collaboration with business partners will be a part of digitalization and thus we will have a need for working on the same foundation around master data. Learn more in the post Multienterprise MDM.

The latest and hottest trends within MDM

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Leading up to the Nordic Midsummer I am pleased to join Informatica and their co-hosts Capgemini and CGI at two morning seminars on how successful organizations can leverage data to drive their digital transformation, the needed data strategy and the urge to have a 360-view of data relationships and interactions.

My presentations will be an independent view on the question: What are the latest and hottest trends within Master Data Management?

In this session, I will give the audience a quick walk-through visiting some in vogue topics as MDM in the cloud, MDM for big data, embracing Internet of Things (IoT) within MDM, business ecosystem wide MDM and the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on MDM.

The events will take place, and you can register to be there, as follows:

Infa Nordic morning seminars 2019

IIoT (or Industry 4.0) Will Mature Before IoT

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

Internet of Things (IoT) is a hot topic in the data management world and yours truly is also among those who sees IoT as a theme that will have a tremendous impact on data management including data quality, data governance and Master Data Management (MDM).

However, I think the flavour of IoT called Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) or Industry 4.0 will mature, and already have matured, before the general IoT theme.

globalIIoT / Industry 4.0 is about how manufacturers use connected intelligent devices to improve manufacturing processes where the general IoT theme extends the reach out in the consumer world – with all the security and privacy concerns related to that.

A clue about the maturity in IIoT is found in a Forbes article by Bernard Marr. The article is called Unlocking The Value Of The Industrial Internet Of Things (IIoT) And Big Data In Manufacturing.

In this article, Justin Hester of automotive part manufacturer Hirotec tells about their approach to embracing IIoT. Justin Hester states that “…we can finally harness the data coming in from all of these different sources, whether they are machines, humans, parts – but I think the real challenge is the next step – how do I execute? That’s the challenge.”

Indeed, how to execute and take (near) real-time action on data will be the scenario where Return on Investment (ROI) will show up. This means, as explained in the article, that you should make incremental implementations.

It also means, that you must be able to maintain master data that can support (near) real-time execution. As IIoT/Industry 4.0 is about connected devices in business ecosystems, my suggestion is a data architecture as described on Master Data Share.

3 Old and 3 New Multi-Domain MDM Relationship Types

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl4 Comments

Master Data Management (MDM) has traditionally been mostly about party master data management (including not at least customer master data management) and product master data management. Location master data management has been the third domain and then asset master data management is seen as the fourth – or forgotten – domain.

With the rise of Internet of Things (IoT), asset – seen as a thing – is seriously entering the MDM world. In buzzword language, these things are smart devices that produces big data we can use to gain much more insight about parties (in customer roles), products, locations and the things themselves.

In the old MDM world with party, product and location we had 3 types of relationships between entities in these domains. With the inclusion of asset/thing we have 3 more exiting relationship types.

Multi-Domain MDM Relations

The Old MDM World

1: Handling the relationship between a party at its location(s) is one of the core capabilities of a proper party MDM solution. The good old customer table is just not good enough as explained in the post A Place in Time.

2: Managing the relationship between parties and products is essential in supplier master data management and tracking the relationship between customers and products is a common use case as exemplified in the post Customer Product Matrix Management.

3:  Some products are related to a location as told in the post Product Placement.

The New MDM World

4: We need to be aware of who owns, operates, maintains and have other party roles with any smart device being a part of the Internet of Things.

5: In order to make sense of the big data coming from fixed or moving smart devices we need to know the location context.

6: Further, we must include the product information of the product model for the smart devices.

Expanding to Business Ecosystems

In my eyes, it is hard to handle the 3 old relationship types separately within a given enterprise. When including things and the 3 new relationship types, expanding master data management to the business ecosystems you have with trading partners will be imperative as elaborated in the post Data Management Platforms for Business Ecosystems.

IoT and Multi-Domain MDM

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

The Internet-of-Things (IoT) is a hot topic and many Master Data Management (MDM) practitioners as well as tool and service vendors are exploring what the rise of the Internet-of-Things and the related Industry 4.0 themes will mean for Master Data Management in the years to come.

globalIn my eyes, connecting these smart devices and exploiting the big data you can pull (or being pushed) from them will require a lot for all Master Data Management domains. Some main considerations will be:

  • Party Master Data Management is needed to know about the many roles you can apply to a given device. Who is the manufacturer, vendor, supplier, owner, maintainer and collector of data? Privacy and security matters on that basis will have to be taken very seriously.
  • Location Master Data Management is necessary at a much deeper and precise level than what we are used to when dealing with postal addresses. You will need to know a home location with a timespan and you will need to confirm and, for moving devices, supplement with observed locations with a timestamp.
  • Product and Asset Master Data Management is imperative in order to know about the product model of the smart device and individual characteristics of the given device.

It is also interesting to consider, if you will be able to manage this connectivity within a MDM platform (even multidomain and end-to-end) behind your corporate walls. I do not think so as told in the post The Intersections of 360 Degree MDM.

What is a Master Data Entity?

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What is a customer? What is a product? You encounter these common questions when working with Master Data Management (MDM).

The overall question about what master data is has been discussed on this blog often as for example in the post A Master Data Mind Map.

Master Data

The two common questions posed as start of this blog post is said to be very dangerous. Well, here are my experiences and opinions:

What is a customer?

In my eyes, customer is a role you can assign to a party. Therefore, the party is the real master data entity. A party can have many other roles as employee, supplier and other kinds of business partner roles. More times than you usually imagine, the party can have several roles at the same time. Examples are customers also being employees and suppliers who are also customers.

From a data quality point of view, it does not have to matter if a party is a customer or not at a certain time. If your business rules requires you to register that party because the party has placed an order, got an invoice, paid an invoice or pre-paid an amount, you will need to take care of the quality of the information you have stored. You will also have to care about the privacy, not at least if the party is a natural person.

Uniqueness is the most frequent data quality issue when it comes to party master data. Again, it is essential to detect or better prevent if the same party is registered twice or more whether that party is a customer according to someone’s definition or not.

What is a product?

Also with products business rules dictates if you are going to register that product. If you are a reseller of products, you should register a product that you promote (being in your range). You could register a product, if you resell that product occasionally (sometimes called specials). If you are a manufacturer, you should register your finished products, your semi-finished products and the used raw materials. Most companies are actually both a reseller and a manufacturer in some degree. Despite of that degree practically all companies also deals with indirect goods as spare parts, office supplies and other stuff you could register as a product within your organisation in the same way your supplier probably have.

What we usually defines as a product is most often what rather should be called a product model. That means we register information about things that are made in the same way and up by the same ingredients and branded similarly. A thing, as each physical instance of a product model, will increasingly have business rules that requires it to be registered as told in the post Adding Things to Product Data Lake.

Big Data Fitness

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A man with one watch knows what time it is, but a man with two watches is never quite sure. This old saying could be modernized to, that a person with one smart device knows the truth, but a person with two smart devices is never quite sure.

An example from my own life is measuring my daily steps in order to motivate me to be more fit. Currently I have two data streams coming in. One is managed by the app Google Fit and one is managed by the app S Health (from Samsung).

This morning a same time shot looked like this:

Google Fit:

google-fit

S Health:

s-health

So, how many steps did I take this morning? 2,047 or 2413?

The steps are presented on the same device. A smartphone. They are though measured on two different devices. Google Fit data are measured on the smartphone itself while S Health data are measured on a connected smartwatch. Therefore, I might not be wearing these devices in the exact same way. For example, I am the kind of Luddite that do not bring the phone to the loo.

With the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the expected intensive use of the big data streams coming from all kinds of smart devices, we will face heaps of similar cases, where we have two or more sets of data telling the same story in a different way.

A key to utilize these data in the best fit way is to understand from what and where these data comes. Knowing that is achieved through modern Master Data Management (MDM).

At Product Data Lake we in all humbleness are supporting that by sharing data about the product models for smart devices and in the future by sharing data about each device as told in the post Adding Things to Product Data Lake.