Standardising Product Data Across European and Asian Markets in a PLM System
Local naming conventions replaced by one shared attribute dictionary, so the same product means the same thing in every market’s reporting.
Product Data Challenge Across European and Asian Markets
Every market had grown its own way of describing product: colour written four ways, season codes that disagreed on when a season starts, compositions typed as free text.
Consolidated reporting was therefore rebuilt by hand each month, and no one trusted a category total enough to act on it quickly.
- Many local attribute conventions in one PLM instance
- ~3 days of manual data cleaning per monthly report
- Category totals differing between markets and head office
What Was Done to Standardise the PLM Product Data
Audit of existing product attributes per market
Every field mapped, counted and scored for completeness and conflict.
One attribute dictionary agreed with all markets
Colour, season, composition and category defined once, with translations.
Migration rules and PLM entry validation
Historic data remapped; new products blocked at entry if key fields are missing.
Data quality dashboard and monthly review
Completeness per attribute and market, with a named owner for each gap.
Product Data Standardisation Results in Numbers
placeholder figuresattribute completeness, from 71% at project start
time spent fixing product data before reporting
attribute dictionary in place of many local conventions
of monthly manual cleaning removed from the reporting cycle
Tools Used in the PLM Data Standardisation Project
PLM system configuration
Attribute lists, validation rules and market permissions.
Advanced Excel for mapping and migration
Power Query pipelines for remapping historic attributes.
Power BI data quality dashboard
Completeness by attribute, market and season, reviewed monthly.
Related Service: Product Data Quality and PLM Standardisation
The same method, adapted to your systems: audit, dictionary, migration rules, validation at entry and a quality dashboard your team reviews.
The dictionary was the easy part — agreeing it was the project.
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