Case study · Industrial
Master Data Management for Multi-Entity Manufacturing
MDM hub with stewardship workflows and cross-entity reference data harmonization.
Key results
- Duplicate records eliminated
- Cross-entity reporting cycle -60%
- Governance compliance 100%
Context
An industrial manufacturer operating six legal entities with separate ERP instances had material master data inconsistencies across entities. The same customer appeared under slightly different names across entities; the same material carried different part numbers; cross-entity reporting took weeks of reconciliation work.
Challenge
MDM was politically difficult — each entity had its own stewardship culture and did not want to cede data control. The solution had to respect entity-level ownership while producing the unified view the parent company needed.
Approach
Thoughtwave delivered a federated MDM architecture: entity-level stewardship remained intact, a unified hub resolved cross-entity identities, and matching rules with human-in-the-loop approval handled the ambiguous cases. The 12-month engagement covered discovery, platform build, data loading, stewardship workflow, and governance operation.
Outcomes
Duplicate records across the entity footprint eliminated; cross-entity reporting cycle compressed 60%; governance compliance reached 100% on the audit sample pulled by external reviewers. Entity-level ownership preserved while the unified view became real for the first time.
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