A part number is a unique identifier assigned by a manufacturer to a specific, orderable item. It is one of the most critical fields in an industrial ERP or CMMS material master — and one of the most frequently incorrect.
A correct part number enables a procurement system to:
Place a purchase order directly with the correct OEM — without manual intervention or reliance on intermediaries.
Identify the exact item in the warehouse — enabling reliable inventory data management and preventing duplicate purchasing.
Track equipment performance by supplier — linking failure rates, maintenance history, and lifecycle costs to the specific part and manufacturer.
Support automated reordering — enabling the ERP system to trigger replenishment based on stock levels and consumption data without requiring manual lookup.
Enable commonality analysis — identifying where the same part exists under different descriptions across locations, enabling spare parts standardisation and cost reduction.
When part numbers in an ERP or CMMS system are missing or incorrect, every one of these capabilities breaks down — and the manual workarounds that compensate for the failure are rarely traced back to the underlying master data quality issue.
The most widespread and costly data error in industrial ERP and CMMS systems is the confusion between part numbers and model numbers. A model number identifies a type or family of product — it describes a product category. A part number identifies a specific, orderable item. They are not the same, and entering one where the other belongs makes automated procurement impossible.
A Yokogawa EJX630A, for example, is a model of pressure transmitter. It describes a product category, not a specific purchasable configuration. An ERP or CMMS material master record that holds a model number in the part number field cannot generate a valid purchase order to the OEM. The procurement team must intervene manually — searching for the correct part number, verifying the specification, and placing the order by hand.
Across a large facility with thousands of spare parts data records, this problem is rarely isolated to a handful of items. In Sharecat Data Services' experience, model numbers in part number fields affect a significant proportion of equipment records — and the problem compounds as new items are added to the system by people unfamiliar with the distinction. It goes unnoticed because the manual workaround masks the root cause of the procurement delay.
Research across nearly 1,900 senior manufacturing executives found that duplicate purchases tied to poor MRO data accuracy account for 5 to 7% of total MRO spend — much of it caused by exactly this type of data error.
Verifying part numbers at the scale required by industrial operators demands a reference that most organisations do not have internally. Sharecat Data Services has built that reference over more than 30 years — a proprietary database of approximately one million verified and normalised manufacturer names, part numbers, and model numbers, derived from direct work with OEMs, suppliers, and industrial operators across oil & gas, energy, utilities, pharmaceutical, and manufacturing.
This reference enables Sharecat Data Services to cross-check part number data in your ERP or CMMS system and identify every record where a model number has been entered in the part number field — something that requires knowledge of how specific OEMs name and number their products, and that automated tools alone cannot reliably detect.
The process begins with a full assessment of your material master data, identifying where part numbers are missing, where model numbers have been entered in part number fields, and where part numbers cannot be verified against a known manufacturer reference. Sharecat Data Services then verifies and corrects each record, confirms that each part number corresponds to a genuine orderable item from the correct manufacturer, and delivers the corrected data in the exact format your ERP or CMMS requires — ready to load, with no internal resources required from your team.
The result is a material master where procurement can operate automatically, inventory data management is reliable, and the manual workarounds caused by incorrect part number data are eliminated. Every project includes a before-and-after statistical comparison so the improvement is measurable. Clients report up to 80% reduction in spares expenditure once their systems have the correct data to operate as intended.
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