Data Taxonomy is probably not something that you have given a great deal of thought to. So, we’re going to define it first, then tell you why you really should pay attention. Taxonomy, is this context, means the identification and classification of the data, or the information, within an organization. Before your eyes slam shut, let’s look at this in the light of the real world.

All of those pieces of paper, all of the reports, readouts, printouts, letters, spreadsheets, and all of the other stuff that you use to make parts or run your company is the data.Determining what is there, where it is stored, and how important it is, is the taxonomy part of this. You call this paperwork, although much of it is not paper, but all of it is important to what you do. We can illustrate this better by taking a look at an (almost) real-world situation.

Wally’s World of Widgets has been supplying the global manufacturing sites of Harry’s House of Holograms for several years. Wally does a pretty good job, but Harry says that he is getting impatient waiting for copies of documents, or information about a an issue related to the widgets. Wally wants to get better control of all the paperwork, and he starts looking at his process. The process goes like this:

A sales proposal is prepared, and this is kept on the computer in the sales guy’s office. And he works from home. A purchase order is sent by the customer and this is printed and stapled to an internal work order. These are kept in a file cabinet in the main office. Purchase orders for the raw materials are kept in the purchasing office. When the raw materials arrive a receiving report is written, as well as an incoming material inspection report. These will be delivered to the main office when the receiving clerk has the time, then filed with the PO when the office manager has the time. Engineering drawings come in from the customer as AutoCAD files. Supporting documents, such as the part description and list of tolerances are sent by e-mail and are in MS Word format. Although they are marked Confidential the documents are printed and inserted in a Work In Process folder for the shift supervisor. Some of the manufactured parts are sent to the Quality Assurance office where they will be tested for manufacturing tolerances. The report is kept in a quality folder marked with the customer’s part number in the QA office. There is also a very expensive device that uses ultrasound to check weld integrity. It produces digital images in JPEG format which are kept on the computer hard drive in the QA office. William, a Certified Widget Master, is very protective of his equipment so he keeps the QA office closed and locked when he’s not there. Then there are the shipping documents such as bills-of-lading, and the air bills from the freight forwarder. Those are paper-clipped together and kept in the shipping office. The shipping manager has her own filing method which is a mystery to everyone else.

That’s a pretty long list of documents and it is not complete. That list is a simplified identification of the documents in the operation. Whether you run the Ginormous Manufacturing Company, serving all of the rocky planets, or Wally’s One-Man Show (Two On A Good Day), you have something like this going on. The trick is to know what you have, where it is, and how to get to it. That’s the management part of document management. If this sounds familiar to you, or if some of this paperwork could not be found, we can help. Go to www.docxplore.com and ask us to do a document survey. It’s free and it may even help to reduce your operating costs and improve productivity.

Now that we know what we’ve got, we should look at how we can use this information to make management decisions. The next article will discuss what to do with all of this data to keep it safe, yet readily accessible. In the meantime, try to work data taxonomy into the conversation at your next cocktail party.