Standardize and consolidate

With measures for standardization and consolidation you can reduce your proliferation of parts and variants as well as complexity.  You will be rewarded with increased efficiency and cost advantages (see potential benefits). The precondition for this, however, is high data quality. Otherwise this task will proceed very slow and will be very grueling.

The possibilities to standardize and consolidate are manifold. Below you will find some examples for which you can obtain best practices from us:

• Standardization and consolidation of parts (components, assemblies and products)
• Standardization and consolidation of product features and other features (e.g. generic names, functions, colors, shapes, types of drive, etc.)
• Standardization and consolidation of suppliers

Standardizing and consolidating means to make a conscious decisions in favor of preferred parts, preferred features or preferred suppliers. In return, this means avoiding alternatives or variants or rather blocking them against redeployment. However, the assignment of a preferred part tag is never irrevocable as the criteria for the assignment may change over time. PartExplorer supports standardization as well as consolidation and thus the administration and maintenance of preferred part tags with of automatisms and as ongoing task. Last but not least PartExplorer controls the process, so that e.g. preferred parts, preferred attributes and preferred suppliers will be displayed prioritized whereas parts, attributes and suppliers to be avoided can, if desired, only be displayed or used with special authorizations. This effectively reduces the proliferation of parts and variants as well as complexity.