NIO Case Study

Chicago-based Newark is part of the global Premier Farnell Group, and a leading, multi- channel, high-service electronics distributor supporting millions of engineers and purchasing professionals across the Americas. In July 2006 the RoHS directive that restricts the use of six hazardous materials in the manufacture of various types of electronic and electrical equipment was adopted in the European Union. The RoHS directive had a profound impact on the global electronic manufacturing industry and Newark was at the forefront of this change. Over an 18 month period leading up to July 2006 Newark would have to deal with major specification changes to more than 4 million items within it’s online product catalog.

MDX at NIO

Newark decided to turn this unprecedented period of change into a competitive advantage. Newark declared that it would be the leading provider of RoHS compliant products and made a commitment to gather, validate and publish RoHS certified products before any of it’s competitors..

Newark leveraged Master Data eXchange “MDM In-The-Cloud” Solution to process product updates from it’s largest suppliers to ensure that changes were correctly identified, validated and provisioned for the Newark online catalog. During the 18 month project more than 200 million data elements linked to 4 million products were processed by MDX.


Approach

Newark did not receive product updates from suppliers to indicate RoHS status or product specification changes. Newark had to continuously gather product information from supplier web sites and product data sheets to identify RoHS updates. Newark was able to provide this raw information to MDX without the need to be concerned with the format of the files, the frequency or volume of changes.

MDX parsed the raw data files into meaningful product information and standardized the data elements according to the Newark standards,. MDX automatically compared the new product data to the existing product information and used rules to determine the validity of the changes before updating the product master file.

Any changes to product information that required additional validation were passed on to Newark data stewards for further scrutiny. MDX maintained a complete history of product changes and an audit log of all updates.



Results

During the period of disruption leading up to RoHS:

  • Newark increased market share as the leading RoHS supplier in the United States.
  • Avoided adding headcount to the product maintenance group.
  • Maintained 100% online product catalog availability.
  • Exceeded product information quality goals in spite of the volatility.