Engagement process — six steps

From catalog extract to report delivery.

Step 1 — Catalog extract

Export your MRO item master from your ERP (SAP, Maximo, Oracle, Infor, JDE) as a CSV or Excel file. Include all active catalog records. Archived or deletion-flagged records may also be included — the engine will identify them within duplicate families.

Step 2 — File validation

Our team reviews the file format within 1 business day of receipt. If mandatory columns are missing or the encoding is non-standard, we advise on the correction before the SLA clock starts.

Step 3 — Intake form

Complete the engagement intake form confirming: plant count, catalog scope (all items or filtered subset), local currency for exposure calculations, and authorized contact for report delivery.

Step 4 — SLA clock starts

Once the validated file and completed intake form are received, the 15-business-day delivery clock starts. You receive a written confirmation with your expected delivery date.

Step 5 — Report delivery

Five artifacts are delivered simultaneously: Open Findings browser report, Excel workbook, Word narrative, PDF summary, and clean deduplicated CSV. The authorized contact receives a delivery notification email.

Step 6 — Open Findings review

Schedule a 60-minute review call (optional, no additional charge). The Open Findings report allows confidence-tier filtering, family-level drill-down, and recommended action review. No ERP access required for the review session.

CSV column reference

What to include in your catalog export.

Column	Status	Notes
Item Number / Material Number	Required	The unique ERP identifier for each catalog item. Accepts alphanumeric values. Must be unique per row.
Description (short or long)	Required	The item master description text. PartsCleanse AI analyzes description patterns for duplicate detection. Both short and long description columns are supported.
Unit of Measure (UOM)	Recommended	Used as a discriminator in duplicate detection. Items with identical descriptions but different UOMs may be legitimate variants — the engine accounts for this.
UNSPSC Code	Recommended	Commodity classification code. Improves category-level duplicate grouping accuracy.
Manufacturer Name	Recommended	Used as a discriminator to distinguish same-description items from different manufacturers.
Manufacturer Part Number (MPN)	Recommended	Cross-referenced against description matches to identify confirmed duplicates vs. cross-reference candidates.
Plant Code / Site Code	Recommended	Used to produce plant-level duplicate analysis in multi-site catalog exports.
Vendor / Supplier Code	Optional	Used for vendor-consolidation analysis in the Excel workbook.
Valuation Price / Unit Cost	Optional	Enables financial exposure calculation in the executive summary. Expressed in local currency.
Stock Quantity	Optional	Combined with unit cost to calculate total inventory exposure for duplicate families.

File format requirements

Technical specifications for your catalog file.

File formatCSV (UTF-8 encoded) or Excel (.xlsx). UTF-8 without BOM preferred.

Header rowFirst row must contain column headers. No merged cells.

DelimiterComma (,) for CSV. Tab-delimited files require prior notification.

Row limitUp to 100,000 rows per engagement. Larger catalogs require a multi-batch scope agreement.

Special charactersDescription text may contain special characters. The engine normalizes encoding before analysis.

What the report delivers

Five artifacts, one clear finding.

Open FindingsInteractive browser report with duplicate families, confidence tiers, and recommended actions

Excel workbookFull duplicate family table with confidence scores, discriminator flags, and estimated exposure per family

Word narrativeExecutive summary ready for presentation to finance, operations, or the board

PDF summaryOne-page diagnostic result for attachment to a capital appropriation request or vendor RFP

Clean catalog CSVDeduplicated item master ready for ERP import or further governance review