Defining Specification Management

For years, companies managed the data needed to make products in spreadsheets or legacy systems. But growing product portfolios and supply chain complexity made managing and sharing data using outdated methods unsustainable.

Unfortunately, legacy systems for managing specifications weren’t built to handle market trends and often buckle under the pressure of a growing company. Organizations today need complete visibility into their supply chains, a single source of truth for data, and the tools to make intelligent and risk-based decisions.

This tension created the need for purpose-built software to manage specification data. Specification Management software is used to manage the data needed to make, buy, and sell products, as well as collaborate with external suppliers and partners across the supply chain to bring those products to market.

What’s a Specification?

Specifications are the littlest form of big data.

Typically, hundreds and thousands of specs are shared across supply chains and between companies to bring products to market. But what is a specification?

Specifications are the technical instructions needed to make a product. This includes everything from raw materials, ingredients, formulas, packaging, labels, and even machinery. Tens of thousands specification data points move across supply chains every day, but companies still struggle with finding an effective solution to managing specs.

Specifications: The Digital Thread for Supply Chain Visibility

The supply chain environment is evolving. Operations are moving to digital structures and nearly every supply chain function and specification has an online representation or “digital twin” through the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

Specification Management is more than just taking control of data across the supply chain. It’s about layering on the right approvals, workflows, analytics and alerts to create traceability and visibility.

Specright’s Specification Management platform enables companies to do intelligent costing, run impact analyses, and create traceability. Specifications are the digital thread that enable these amazing outcomes. Most companies sit on an abundance of data, but only a fraction use it to make major supply chain decisions.

By centralizing all of your specification data, you gain a holistic understanding of what’s going on in your supply chain and the impact potential changes might have downstream.

Who Uses Specification Management Software?

Specification management is used by anyone who deals with specs. This includes quality assurance professionals, new product development teams, packaging engineers, graphic designers, and the list goes on.

Specifications function as the contract between internal and external stakeholders in agreement of the expectations for the final product. Specification documents enable internal stakeholders to explicitly state what they want out of the production cycle, ensuring that all criteria are met as requested.

External stakeholders use specs as a roadmap, guiding them to deliver exactly what is asked for. Similarly to the way product designers must adhere to the requirements of a standards organization, external stakeholders must adhere to the requirements of the specification documents. If problems arise, discrepancies can easily be traced back to their root and resolved quickly. That’s why most Specright customers give access to their suppliers, so everyone is working off the live, digital spec.

Next Generation Supply Chain Management

At Specright, we pioneered this new category of Specification Management, enabling companies to take control of their data in the present, while preparing them for where the industry’s headed in the future.We announced an exciting step towards the future with Specright Network. Specright Network will allow companies to share and publish specifications across their supply chain network in real-time and create unparalleled traceability through distributed ledger technology.

With Specification Management, organizations can do more than just manage data: they can take control of their supply chains and transform how they operate. To learn more about Specright’s Specification Management platform, book a demo or reach out to a member of our team.