OptimalSPARES™ Wiki / Data and MRP
Foundation
Materials data and MRP
Every stocking decision rests on the materials data underneath it. Duplicated, mis-described or unclassified materials cause phantom stockouts, duplicate holding and orders for parts already on a shelf under another name. Clean data is not admin, it is the foundation of the optimisation.
Material master data
The material master is the record of every stocked item: its description, classification, attributes, manufacturer part numbers, units and stocking data. When it is poor, the same bearing appears three times under three descriptions, each with its own stock and its own reorder, so the plant holds triple and still runs out. When it is good, one part is one record, correctly described and findable.
Classification, cleansing and enrichment
Modern materials data work is AI-assisted, so a large multilingual catalogue can be cleaned and classified at a scale hand-editing never could:
| Classification standards | Structured description to a standard: the MMD 3.1 noun, modifier and attributes, and where useful UNSPSC or eClass category codes and ISO 8000 data-quality rules, so items are consistent and comparable. |
|---|---|
| AI-assisted classification | Machine learning reads free-text descriptions in many languages and proposes the class, the attributes and the category codes for review, rather than each item being coded by hand. |
| Data cleanse | Standardise descriptions, fill missing attributes, attach manufacturer part numbers and correct units, to a defined data standard. |
| De-duplication | Fuzzy matching finds the records that are the same physical part under different descriptions and languages, and consolidates them. This is where much of the hidden overstock lives. |
| Search and cataloguing | Natural-language and fuzzy search, so a user finds the part that already exists instead of raising a duplicate, on a clean classified catalogue that the stocking policy and the ERP both run on. |
One source of truth, across systems
Large operators run several ERPs and CMMS across their sites, each with its own descriptions, part numbers and classifications, so the same bearing exists many times over with no way to see it. The optimisation depends on harmonising all of that into a single trusted record for each physical part, a golden record, that every site and system maps to. That one source of truth is what makes cross-site pooling, group-level spend and honest stock figures possible, and it is the foundation a move to a new ERP such as SAP S/4HANA rests on: clean harmonised data migrated once, not the old mess carried across. OptimalSPARES™ works as an intelligence layer over the existing ERP and CMMS, not a replacement, cleaning and harmonising the data and writing the trusted result back.
Bills of materials
The equipment bill of materials links each part to the assets it belongs to. That link is what lets criticality flow from the asset to the spare, what shows how many units are installed across the site, and what tells a planner which parts a given job will need. Building and cleaning the BoMs is often the highest-value step, because without them a spare is just a line in a catalogue with no connection to the plant.
ERP, SAP and MRP
The output is written back to the system of record. Clean, classified master data and the calculated min, max and reorder points load into the ERP, typically SAP materials management, where materials requirements planning nets demand against stock and open orders and raises the replenishment. OptimalSPARES™ is built to be ERP and SAP ready, so the optimisation lands in the system the storeroom actually runs on rather than in a report beside it.
Where OptimalSPARES™ fits
OptimalSPARES™ carries the cleanse, the classification, the de-duplication and the BoM build as guided steps, holds the clean catalogue as the single source, and keeps it synchronised with the ERP so the data does not drift back to where it started.