Good item master data, combined with sales data and forecasts, for example, will let a company be more accurate and forward-looking about when and how much to order from suppliers. Item master data consists of useful inputs for analyses aimed at improving business processes, but it’s integral to day-to-day decisions and processes as well, particularly in supply chain management and inventory management. But to outfit the item master data with all the right information managers need to make decisions aligned with the company’s priorities, there will likely be more fields - for example, physical parameters are common - along with custom fields specific to that company or product, as determined by senior business leaders. The item master in a company’s ERP should have those fields as a baseline. At the very least, an item master should contain the item’s name, description and cost to manufacture, as well as its current inventory levels, its manufacturing lead time, its bill of materials, the sources and suppliers of those materials and the quantities of materials currently on order. The greater the detail contained in an item master, the better the company’s ability to optimize and improve the financial return they get on making, stocking and selling the product.
Product managers, along with purchasing, sales and finance professionals, can use it to understand things like the value of the company’s inventory, manufacturing times and purchase price variances for materials - all of which are variables that can affect a product’s - and the company’s - bottom line. “Item master data” refers to all of the information contained in the item master for products in a company’s ERP system. Not all collections of inventory item data will be item masters, but item masters are always populated with inventory item data. “Item master data” refers to the information within one or more item masters, and “inventory item data” usually refers to information about a particular inventory item or type of inventory item. Item masters tell business managers everything they need to know about inventory items of a certain type. Item Master vs Inventory Item:Īn item master is a collection of records about a type of inventory item.
For large companies whose main economic activity is selling physical products, item masters are so important they’re sometimes called the DNA of the company. Item masters can be quite comprehensive ideally, they should contain every piece of information that managers of many kinds, at any level in the organization, would need to inform decisions pertaining to the product. (Note: The persons responsible for keeping the item master data record are also often called “item masters.”) Item masters are typically located within a company’s ERP system.
What Is an Item Master?Īn item master is an organized collection of all pertinent information relevant to a specific product. When it comes to product information, there is one place in a company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that supply chain analysts and operations employees alike can look to find a product’s suppliers, materials used to build it, unit inventory and even what margin the company is realizing on the product: the product’s item master data. East, Nordics and Other Regions (opens in new tab)
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