Glossário · MDS
Material Description Standardization
Material description standardization is the practice of describing every material the same way: same order of characteristics, same unit, same abbreviation, same vocabulary. The description stops being free text and becomes composed of attributes — which makes the material findable, comparable and purchasable without interpretation.
In practice
What this changes in your master data
Attributes instead of a sentence
Type, material, dimension, standard, finish. Each characteristic in its own field, with the description assembled from them.
It comes before purchasing
A standardized material description lets you compare quotes line by line. Free text forces the buyer to guess equivalence.
Questions
Frequently asked questions about this term
The symptom of its absence is familiar: the same bolt registered six times, with six different descriptions, bought at six prices. Standardization is not cosmetic — it is the condition for consolidating demand, negotiating on volume and reducing idle stock.
The practice is the same; the object changes. One covers materials, the other services. A service has no physical dimension, so the set of characteristics differs.
Not at once. The usual path is to standardize the highest-turnover or highest-value families first, and enforce the rule at entry so the problem stops growing.
Much of it: extracting attributes from the existing description, suggesting equivalence and detecting duplicates. Human review still decides the ambiguous cases.
Keep going
Related terms
pds · taxonomia-de-materiais · ncm