What does this change in practice?

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.

Is this the same as service description standardization?

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.

Do we have to redo the whole catalogue?

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.

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.

See the glossary pds

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.

It underpins tax classification

Correct tax classification depends on knowing exactly what the item is. A vague description produces classification by analogy.

Questions

Frequently asked questions about this term

Keep going

Related terms

pds · taxonomia-de-materiais · ncm

See material description standardization

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