GPC Clouds

As per http://www.gs1.org/docs/gpc/gpc_unspcs_integration_update.pdf , GPC is going to be integrated with UNSPSC. That’s probably understandable since definitely all the companies don’t want to invest effort twice to product classification. Well, since that’s going to happen by end of 2007, GPC Clouds are perhaps still applicable for a while.

UNSPSC Clouds

Tag clouds have become popular in Web 2.0 and social networking. Similar ideas are also entering into the enterprise applications. How would representing unspsc codes look like as clouds? The answer to that is available at enterprise clouds. Direct link is unspsc clouds.

GPC similar to UNSPSC?

UCCNet used to use UDEX codes for product categorization in their product messages. After getting merged with Transora and formed 1Sync, UDEX is being slowly phased out to use GPC (Global Product Classification). Looking at GPC, it’s coding seems to be similar to UNSPSC as they also have segments, families and classes. However, GPC’s 4th level is called Bricks (and Brick codes) while for UNSPSC it’s Commodity.

However, one main different with GPC is that the brick codes are also supposed to define characteristics of the products belonging to those brick codes. GPC includes this standard for the product characteristics and that’s good to be part of the product exchange message. Ofcourse, writing software to get this right on both the seller and buyer side is quite challenging.

UNSPSC v9.0501 : A few statistics

I wanted to update the stats for v9.0501

* No of segments : 55 (remains same from earlier)
* No of families : 419 (up from 363)
* No of classes : 2551 (up from 2125)
* No of commodities : 21718 (up from 19038)
* Avg commodities per class : 8.5 (reduced from close to 9)
* Class with max commodities: Antibiotics (51101500) contains a total of 93 commodities (up from 92)
* Family with max commodities: Measuring and observing and testing instruments (41110000) contains a total of 638 commodities
* Segment with max commodities: Medical Equipment and Accessories and Supplies (42000000) contains a total of 2517 commodities

Searching UNSPSC Codes

Searching for unspsc codes at unspsc.org is a real pain. Why? Because, when you search for “cat” to get all the products related to cats, you also end up with products such as “Cracking catalysts”. The problem is that the search they provide searches on the title by concatenating % on both sides of the keyword. That is, “%cat%” which means, all titles that contain a word “cat” in it. Since “Cracking catalysts” contains “cat” in it, you end up seeing those also in the results.

I am thinking of working on an application that can provide a better search for these UNSPSC codes. So, if you have any particular requirement or interested in getting my application drop me a comment indicating what is a right price for such an application or what your requirement is.

UNSPSC and the “Raw Material to Service” Pipeline

One interesting fact I learnt from the UNSPSC slides is the fact that the coding is divided such that the segments are numbered from low to high in the order they add value to the product. So, for example, currently

10-15 is raw material
20-27 is industrial equipment (that can process the raw material)
30-41 is components and supplies (that are produced from 1 & 2 above)
42-60 is end use products (that are produced from 1 & 2 and 3 above and available to the end user, as opposed to, say businesses as intermediate components or supplies)
70-94 is services (one manufactured, ofcourse, the end products should be sold, shipped, distributed, serviced etc. So, this is a catch all for all types of services).

Obviously, there are some gaps in the segment numbers above. Not sure why. Perhaps, something may get added in between or the existing ones can get expanded once they run of out space (which by the way, is quite big).

But, first time I read this idea, I really liked the approach.

UNSPSC? What is it?

UNSPSC stands for The “United Nations Standard Products and Services Code”. And a plenty of information can be found at unspsc.org.

UNSPSC codes are for categorizing products using a open standard. The benefits of using UNSPSC are

*. Companies don’t have to spend time and effort coming up with their own classification scheme for the products
*. It is an open standard and contributed by many people in the world. So, your business customers and suppliers are probably using the same classification.
*. It is a 4 level classification. The levels are Segment, Family, Class and Category.