What problem a unified material master solves
A manufacturing company almost never lives in a single system. According to an industry review, enterprises manage data across an average of 17 enterprise systems, and 72% struggle to integrate legacy data (Verdantis). The same bearing exists at once as "6205-2RS1", "cylindrical roller bearing", and "part no. 12345" in Plant A's ERP, Plant B's CMMS, and the engineers' PLM.
The result of this misalignment is measurable. Procurement does not find an item that has already been created and creates it again, increasing duplicates. Because of ambiguous part descriptions, items are reordered "just in case": one manufacturer with $100-150 million in revenue held $15 million in spare parts across three warehouses and overpaid $1-1.4 million a year for storage (Verdantis). Inconsistent descriptions break search, trigger duplicate purchasing and uncontrolled maverick spend, and BOM specification errors lead to rework and delays.
The business outcome is one material, one record, read the same way by procurement, production, engineering, and quality across all plants. Then the purchase order points to the correct part, and the bill of materials is assembled from verified items.
What Riversand actually does for this use case
Riversand, now part of Syndigo, is a multidomain MDM platform: it manages the Product, Customer, Supplier, Location domains and material data in one application and one interface (Riversand / CabinetM). For manufacturing, the key point is that the platform natively manages product, vendor, spare parts, and material data, and can expand for new needs (Datamation).
Key mechanisms relevant to a material master:
- Golden record. The platform collects identities from many sources and stitches them into one trusted record with AI matching algorithms, giving a single view of conflicting data from duplicate systems (Riversand MDM).
- Validation and quality automation. The built-in framework checks data and improves quality metrics, while golden records are managed through business KPIs, rules, and workflows (Riversand).
- A graph instead of a rigid schema. The platform is built on a NoSQL graph database for rapid relationship discovery without upfront modeling and includes a built-in AI/analytics framework (Datamation).
- Integration with the operational landscape. Among the integrations mentioned are SAP, CMMS systems, planned maintenance software, and data warehouses (Datamation) so MDM becomes the source of truth, not just another island.
Important engineering logic: here MDM works alongside ERP and PLM as a separate reference data layer, rather than replacing or forking them. The business logic for deduplication and governance lives in the MDM service, while plant systems continue in their own roles and receive validated records from it.
How this changes BOM and procurement management
Procurement stops searching blind: instead of several descriptions of the same part, there is one normalized card with verified attributes (dimensions, composition, supplier code). BOMs are built from golden records, so quotes are prepared faster and purchasing specifications become trusted (Verdantis BOM).
Industry sources quantify the effect of cleaning up a material master: 10-15% lower inventory from removing duplicates, 30% higher purchase order accuracy, 50% faster data processing, and 15-20% lower MTTR thanks to the availability of the right parts (Verdantis). These are not vendor promises, but benchmarks for material data discipline in manufacturing.
A particular benefit for multi-plant groups is unified item creation rules. A multi-step approval workflow runs the data through procurement, quality, and engineering before publishing a new record, filtering out duplicates and input errors (Verdantis). That is exactly what Riversand achieves with its governance workflows on top of the golden record.
Process flow
Sources (plant ERPs, PLM, CMMS, supplier price lists) -> loaded into Riversand MDM -> AI matching and duplicate deduplication -> creation of a material golden record with verified attributes -> governance workflow (procurement + quality + engineers approve) -> publication of the reference card back to ERP/PLM/procurement -> BOMs and purchase orders reference the single record.
Business process takeaway
A unified material master in multidomain MDM changes not just the item card, but the process itself: creating a new item becomes a controlled gateway with deduplication and approval, not free entry in every system. When procurement and BOMs reference one golden record, the root cause of ordering errors disappears: master data misalignment between plants and systems. Riversand is one example of a platform that addresses this challenge; the actual gain depends on the cleanliness of source data and the strictness of the governance rules the enterprise is ready to follow.
