Year In Review: IMA's Top Five Highlights From 2013

As the New Year quickly approaches and we say goodbye to 2013, it is always a great time to reflect on the highlights, accomplishments and events that took place over the past twelve months. Much like 2012, this year the evolution of IMA continued as the company launched a new series of web-based services and experienced significant growth within the global market. While there were many topics that could have made our 2013 highlight list, in the end we could only choose five. Let’s take a look.

1)    IMA Introduces the uManage Series of Web-Based Services (Jan. 24, 2013)

After years of successfully providing catalogue management services via phone, fax and email, IMA made the big move to the web in 2013 by introducing its uManage series of web-based services. In comparison to traditional services, uManage was designed as a method of centralizing and standardizing the catalogue management process. Through unified web forms, uManage ensures maximum data consistency and accuracy, while reducing administrative efforts. In addition, built-in administrative features enable detailed reporting, traceability and improved cataloguing efficiency.

With one year under its belt and currently over 600 active users, uManage has proven to be a great success throughout 2013. By collecting client feedback, suggestions and market research, 2014 will no doubt see uManage evolve into an even more powerful and effective data management tool.

2)    IMA Signs Multi-Year Contract with 3M Globally (Mar. 22, 2013)

On March 22, 2013 IMA was selected as the sole service provider for the 3M DataCleansing project. With a multi-year contract signed, IMA will complete data cleansing for all 3M sites globally, beginning with North America. Upon completion of the initial phase of data cleansing, IMA is contracted to manage the 3M corporate catalogue through its uManage web-based service. “Securing a client of this magnitude is a huge accomplishment for IMA and a true testament to the level of services we offer” stated Troy Miller, Vice President of IMA Ltd. As the account manager for the 3M project, Troy went on to say “We are very excited to have a long-term deal with 3M and we look forward to assisting 3M in its efforts to reduce inventory costs while improving maintenance efficiency world-wide.

3)    IMA Featured in PEM and Plant & Works Engineering Magazines (May/Nov. 2013)

As a growing company with over twenty years of experience, IMA was able to share some of its industry knowledge by publishing articles in both PEM (Plant Engineering andMaintenance) Magazine and Plant & Works Engineering Magazine UK. Both articles focused on the topic of Data Quality and provided insight to the methodology, process, results, and benefits of Data Cleansing.

If you missed these articles, digital versions are available at the links below. Look for more interesting and informational magazine publications from IMA in 2014!

PEM Magazine – “A Data Scrub Down”

http://pem.clbmedia.dgtlpub.com/2013/2013-06-30/home.php

Plant & Works Engineering Magazine – “Uncovering Hidden Savings”

http://www.capsule-group.com/digital/pwe/b311/display.html#1

4)    IMA Raises Over $12,000 for The Sunshine Foundation (Nov. 16, 2013)

Following months of planning and tickets sales, the Chasing Dreams CharityGala went off without a hitch on November 16th, bringing in over $12,000 for The Sunshine Foundation. It was an elegant night filled with great people, delicious food, and endless entertainment.

The evening began with a silent auction featuring a variety of items to suit all ages and tastes. Next, the Master of Ceremonies, Steve Molnar, welcomed guests with a short speech and invited the Sunshine Foundation representative, Joelle Efford, to say a few words. The welcome ceremony also included a guest visit from one of the Sunshine Foundation families who emotionally shared the story of their 8-year old son’s life-threatening heart condition. Jesse, who was diagnosed with congenital heart failure and classified as “medically fragile”, was part of The Sunshine Foundation’s Dream Lift program that takes ill and disabled children on a dream trip to Disney World. While at Disney World, Jesse and his family were able to relax on an all expenses paid vacation, without any doctor’s appointments or medical tests. Jesse had always dreamed of meeting Captain Jack Sparrow and thanks to the Sunshine Foundation, his dream came true.

Following a superb meal prepared by Beres’ Catering, a live auction had the crowd fired up as the enthusiastic auctioneers called out bids. The excellent lineup of high-ticket auction items included Toronto Maple Leaf tickets, fine dining experiences, golf trips, and exotic vacation packages, which brought in a significant contribution for the Sunshine Foundation.

Once the live auction wrapped up, it was time for the main attraction, which featured YukYuk’s On Tour Live Comedy. The audience witnessed two hours of hilarious, laugh-out-loud comedy performed by three of the country’s top comedians. There wasn’t a dull moment in the building as the event came to a close and the final tally of proceeds was calculated.

The event was a huge success and would not have been possible without the generous support of the local Tillsonburg community and IMA social committee. Once again, IMA would like to extend its sincerest appreciation to all of the individuals, businesses, and committee members who made this event such a success. Together, we have helped dreams come true for sick and disabled children across Canada.

5)    IMA Cleanses Over 1.5 Million SKUs in 2013 (Dec. 31, 2013)

The past twelve months have been some of IMA’s busiest yet. With many new clients, global project expansions, and over 800 active catalogue management users, IMA is pleased to announce that it successfully cleansed over 1.5 Million SKUs (items) in 2013. As always, IMA continues to improve and develop its services to meet the demand and needs of its clients. As 2013 comes to an end, IMA is excited to kick off another great year with many new ideas, challenges, solutions, and success stories.

On behalf IMA, we would like to thank all of our clients, partners, and staff for making 2013 another successful and prosperous year.

Happy Holidays and all the best in 2014 from the IMA Team!

Lost In Translation: The Challenge In Translating Materials Data

Within multi-site global manufacturing organizations, language is a common barrier that can greatly impact productivity and efficiency across the corporation. Translation of manufacturing documents and data requires a specific area of expertise, which can only be acquired through experience and education in the industry. When it comes to materials data translation, it is critical that all part descriptions, materials, sizes and drawings maintain their accurate format and meaning.

In many cases, translation companies simply translate information on a word for word basis, without understanding the true context of the document, technical specification, or description. By doing so, the information can be misconstrued and cause many headaches for the end users.

Let me explain - a BALL BEARING is a standard MRO item, which every manufacturing organization maintains hundreds of in their item master. The problem is that when the part description is translated for this common MRO item, it can potentially take on a different and incorrect meaning.

For example, two translation agencies were provided the same original Ball Bearing description from an English source and asked to translate it to Portuguese. One of the translators was a subject matter expert, specializing in the Manufacturing and Engineering industry. The other translator had very little experience in any type of industrial setting and no understanding of the part description. When the file was delivered, only one of the samples successfully preserved the true industrial meaning of the Ball Bearing description in the desired language. The other sample was misinterpreted due to the lack of basic part knowledge and industrial expertise, in which case the part meaning was lost in translation.

IMA recognizes the impact that poor translation can have on a project and an organization. For this reason, IMA is proud to have staff resources fluent in English, French, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch, German and Italian. All staff resources have background knowledge and experience within the manufacturing industry to ensure that each translation project reflects the data in its most accurate and useful context. In addition, IMA has aligned itself with proven translation partners, who have been carefully qualified and selected through an extensive research, sampling and evaluation process.

For more information on IMA services, please visit www.imaltd.com or contact info@imaltd.com.

What Drives UNSPSC Coding and Why Is It Needed?

Although UNSPSC may be a mouthful to say, this internationally known acronym represents one of the most commonly used product and service classification systems in the world. These five little letters stand for the United Nations Standard Productsand Services Code, which is a hierarchical system that is an open, global multi-sector standard for accurate classification of products and services.

While many people are familiar with UNSPSC, one of the most frequently asked questions that we hear at IMA is “what drives UNSPSC coding and why is it needed?” Well, to answer the question, the UNSPSC code is comprised of four levels, which include Segment, Family, Class, and Commodity. In some cases, companies will choose only a select group of UNSPSC codes for all of their products and services to fall under, whereas others will take full advantage of the entire code set, right down to the fourth level. In any case, when IMA completes a coding project, each item must first be assigned a proper Noun-Modifier pair using the IMA Noun-Modifier Dictionary. By assigning a Noun-Modifier, IMA has the key characteristics to properly identify Segment, Family, Class and Commodity for each individual item.

For example:

Raw Client Data: 6205-2rs BRG, Ball, SKF

IMA Noun-Modifier: BEARING, BALL

31000000 – Manufacturing Components and Supplies

31170000 – Bearings and Bushing and Wheels and Gears

31171500 – Bearings

31171504 – Ball Bearings

Without a strategic classification system, companies are basically managing inventory blindly, without any accurate statistics to support their business decisions. As a result, excess inventory continues to grow, parts are sourced from a multitude of suppliers, and items are purchased at a premium price. However, when items are properly classified and UNSPSC codes are used to their full potential, companies can reap significant cost savings benefits through accurate spend analysis, inventory reduction and procurement optimization.

Regardless of whether you choose to use UNSPSC or your own custom coding system, it is important to establish and maintain some type of classification schema throughout your item master in order to conduct an efficient and accurate spend analysis. Although it may seem like just another number attached to each item, this little number can provide a lot of insight when making critical business decisions.

For more information, please visit www.imaltd.com or contact info@imaltd.com.

Show Me the Money: MRO Analysis and Inventory Optimization

There is no question that a lot of money is tied up in MRO inventory but the common question companies ask is how to turn that unnecessary evil into cost savings.

The answer – Inventory Optimization.

Inventory Optimization can be defined as an action of balancing capital investment, service-level objectives and ROI, over a large number of stock-keeping units (SKUs), while taking demand and supply volatility into account.

As a service, Inventory Optimization is a method of analyzing historical data, identifying unnecessary expenses, disposing of excess inventory, and adjusting stock levels for maximum asset efficiency.

When a formal inventory optimization project is undertaken it is often found that many item descriptions are inconsistent with spelling errors and missing information such as manufacturer name and/or part number. When the part description is unrecognizable to maintenance workers, it leads to part duplication, false stock-outs, equipment downtime and overall maintenance inefficiency.

Before an inventory analysis can take place, all inventory data must first be cleansed to ensure that it is accurate, complete, and properly categorized.

Once the original data has been cleansed, we typically find that duplicate items range from 5-15% within a given site and the percentage of commonality across multi-site organizations can sometimes range as high as 25%.

Next, the inventory can be sorted into typical commodity groups, including: Bearing & PT, Industrial Supplies, Electrical, Instrumentation, Fluid Power, and Pipes, Valves & Fittings. Commodity groups can then be segmented into categories based on usage, such as: Required Active, Excess-Active and Inactive. Required Active parts are those which are used commonly and must be stocked at all times. Excess-Active parts are simply overstock of Required Active items.

Inactive parts can be further segmented into Critical Spares, Slow-moving or Obsolete Materials. Critical Spares include items that are essential for the business to operate and stocking out would significantly impact production, quality, safety or cost. Slow-moving items include parts with long lead times which may affect plant efficiency, or recommended spare parts which are kept to satisfy risk aversion.

Optimization and rationalization of the above mentioned categories requires a very strategic approach but can return significant cost savings.

Typically we find that Required Active items range from 25-30%, Excess Active items range from 10-20% and Inactive items range from 50-60% of all inventories. Furthermore, we consistently find that within all Inactive inventories, Critical Spares represent 15-20%, Slow-moving items represent 20-25%, and Obsolete items represent 15%.

The opportunity for cost savings predominantly comes through the elimination of duplicate items and the rationalization of Excess-Active and Slow-Moving inventory. These items can be used down through attrition, sold back to the supplier for credit towards future purchases, or sold to a third part for cash. In many cases obsolete items can also offer some opportunity for generating cash.

To take the process even further, an inventory analysis will reveal spend by commodity and spend by supplier, often resulting in a multitude or suppliers and a large range in pricing. With this information, procurement can now leverage spend to establish preferred supplier programs and receive reduced MRO item pricing.

For more information on Inventory Optimization and other services provided by I.M.A. Ltd., please visit www.imaltd.com or contact info@imaltd.com.