GMA, FMI TO ADDRESS QUALITY OF ITEM DATA

Michael Garry

WASHINGTON -- A consortium of six trade associations, including Food Marketing Institute and Grocery Manufacturers of America, both based here, has launched an effort to address the lingering issue of product data quality and devise ways to restore confidence in the data.

The group, which came into being in late April at the ECR Europe conference in Paris, has been comparing strategies and developing plans for a work group expected to be unveiled later this month, according to Pamela Stegeman, vice president, supply chain and technology, GMA.

The work group will develop a timeline for testing and rollout of scenarios aimed at improving the quality of manufacturers' product data, ensuring that the physical dimensions and other attributes of a product reflect reality, within defined tolerances.

"We are interested in developing a single process that is global and open to all companies," thereby avoiding overlapping or redundant processes, said Stegeman. FMI declined to comment on the program.

Retailers already engaged in product data synchronization, such as Wegmans Food Markets and Ahold (see story, this page) have complained about the inaccuracy of data being passed on to them by manufacturers. Even when the data is synchronized, it may not reflect the actual physical characteristics of the product, causing problems in shipping and allocation.

"A number of retailers I talked to said [inaccurate data] is one reason they haven't jumped full-force into [data synchronization]," said Stegeman.

"We believe [the six-association project] is an important step in the global implementation process and should remove the biggest barrier to retail implementation of [global data synchronization]. We need more retailers involved."

The other trade associations in the group are all based in Europe. They include Global Commerce Initiative (GCI), Cologne, Germany; GS1 (EAN International), Brussels, Belgium; CIES, Paris; and AIM (Association des Industries de Marque, or European Brands Association), Brussels.

Stegeman said she has formulated a preliminary "vision" regarding the creation of a system certifying data accuracy, and disseminated it to the other associations for review. Consensus on the vision will lead to the formation of the work group, which will include retailer and manufacturer participation.

Stegeman acknowledged that manufacturers are responsible for ensuring that data they supply to their data pool for synchronization with retailers is correct. However, upon receiving accurate data from manufacturers, retailers are then responsible for any changes they make to the data to accommodate their own distribution requirements, she noted.

Another global initiative under way to address data accuracy falls under the auspices of the Global Standards Management Process (GSMP), a standards body created by GS1 and the Uniform Code Council. GSMP work groups, which includes GMA representation, are working on setting "tolerances" for data quality, Stegeman said.

Those tolerances would reflect the changes packaging may undergo during the shipment process. "During the summer, humidity may cause paper products to expand," she said. "There is a standard range of variances that is acceptable, but it's not an easy thing to determine."

In another data accuracy initiative, which began this year, UCC is setting up an audit on behalf of Wegmans to compare physical product attributes with information contained in data pools. Wegmans welcomed other retailers to participate in the audit, which was being piloted with 23 Wegmans suppliers.

Stegeman observed that any auditing system should be scalable on a global level -- which is the aim of the multi-association consortium. She believes it's preferable to have "one system globally so we don't create more costs with different audits in the supply chain."

Data quality also came up at the recent Retail Systems 2005 Conference & Exposition, held May 24 to 26 in Chicago. In one session, Tim Haynes, director, order and revenue management, Gillette, Boston, described the company's attempts to deal with a "lack of clean data."

Part of that was the development of a global product catalog that would represent "one source of data truth" rather than having data in fragmented systems, said Haynes. Gillette is looking to augment its catalog by implementing a data quality program, he added.