Item Master Size

We currently have approximately 70,000 item in our item master with less than half active. We have received a request to add 22,000 spine items for a new initiative that will shut down X item ordering for spine cases. In addition, the Optime DBAs are requesting we build tens of thousands of implants into Lawson for their interface so they can barcode and scan. I see our item master exploding along with the maintenance requirements for it. Here are my questions regarding the item master:

What is your current item master size?
Do you forsee this increasing or decreasing?
Whathas been the maintenance requirements for your item master (FTEs, cleansing, etc)?

Thanks everyone.

Dan

Find more posts tagged with

Infor Lawson Supply Chain Management - Discussion

Comments

unknown

Hey,

Our ItemMaster currently has just over 80,000 total items with just shy of 44,000 active. Our active count has gone up from 27,000 18 months ago for two primary reasons: 1) reduce special item ordering and 2) increase items available for Epic.

We are continuously adding between 50 and 100 new items a day with most of those requests stemming from our Epic end users and our Value Analysis team.

We started working on our Epic implementation in Feb of 2015, at that time, we had two analyst but as we got deeper into it we had to hire an additional FTE. And we could quite honestly use a 4th.

For cleansing, we currently use a program called NuVia from GHX, however, we have not been satisfied with it's abilities and are currently in discussions with Vizient to implement their data cleansing application. Not sure of the timeline yet for that install.

Hope this helps, feel free to let me know if you have any further questions.

unknown

Hi Dan

As of June 30th, I have 119,395 active items in my item master. We loaded both the spinal and ortho contracts for Epic.

I have been in build mode since 2005 and we show no signs of stopping any time soon.

1. 119,000 for 6 hospitals with ORs.

2. Increasing on average of 15% per fiscal year over the last 4 fiscal years.

3. We implemented a ticketing system - based on our Right Now/System Now IT ticketing system. Items route/generate from VAT, route through Contracts, route to System Analysts (this is where we load to Lawson, then route to Finance/Epic for inclusion to the OR IC12 and EAP assignment.

FTEs for this process: VAT and Contracts do this as part of their duties, we have 3 System Analysts, 4 Epic, 1.5 Finance

We have NuVia and do not have issues with most items - new tech/revision releases are the issue at the moment.

Maintenance is as challenging as you'd expect. If an item falls off contract and has no usage whatsoever, we inactivate it with VOID NO USAGE in the description. Epic users who subsequently need to use it, flex code the item with last known cost and notify SCM. We try to find a current price then.

If item has been discontinued, we inactivate it and they flex it off their shelf until it's gone.

Conversions are the pain point - we tell them, they update the cards, but the items tend to languish on the shelves or in some room until they resurface and we get the "this was never given a Lawson number, but we use it ALL THE TIME" - and the emails start.

I'm curious to hear about Vizient - because I honestly do not know how to do my job without NuVia Power Sourcing. To go from v9 to v10 we wanted to populate some new fields. I ran the entire item mast (114K at the time) and it took 20 minutes.

jon-athey

We're a small health system (4 hospitals - 481 total beds, 5 Urgent Cares, about 90 physicians offices/clinics and home care services) and we have 121,000 items (85,000 active/36,000 inactive). We will be bringing another hospital into the fold over the next year so I anticipate adding another 10,000 items.

66,000 (78%) of our active items are from catalog loads in 2010 and 2013 with a 6,000 item load just last December. We do our own cleansing but don't scrub the descriptions on the catalog loads. We just load the description that the vendor provides except that we add two characters at the beginning to denote the vendor (i.e. DE for Depuy; BM for Biomet; SN for Smith & Nephew, etc.).

We don't add a lot of items daily. I just looked at the ICAUDIT table and we've only added a little over 800 items in the last 6 months. That's about 6 item adds/day. Our VATs and Contract Management team keep the numbers down. Requisition line breakdown by item type is 76% Inventory, 18% Nonstock, 5% Specials and 1% Service.

We'll be live on Epic in April 2017, currently using Cerner Surginet. We have 2 FTEs that maintain IC11, IC12, PO13 and PO25- a supply contracts assistant who maintains PO25 and PO13 plus does some mass loads and a data coordinator who we call the Item Master Master who does most of the item adds and also maintains item master data and CDM data in both Lawson and Cerner.

There is definitely more maintenance loading full catalogs and then inactivating the items when the vendor discontinues and we have never purchased them, but with Addins the maintenance is much easier. I'm not quite sure what the benefit is but it was Contract Management's decision.

unknown

John-We're in the same boat with you in regards to NuVia. It is beneficial for some things, however, there are way too many inconsistencies for me to put much trust in it. We are actively looking for another option as we're about 95% confident that we'll be canceling our agreement next year. I'd be interested to hear about other options out there. As far as our item master size, we are pretty lean in our system with 22,138 total items and 18,599 active. We're very diligent in trying to keep the system clean, however, I do anticipate our system growing as we're moving to a GE Inventory system that will require all items to have a Lawson #. I'm also looking to expand our item master to cut down on special orders. I like KatVila's process re: inactivating only when an item falls off contract and there is no usage. I'll be looking at rolling this out to our staff very soon.

unknown

Sorry for replying to an older string. What inconsistencies are you experiencing with NuVia? We're in budget mode and I'm being asked to assess.

unknown

My frustration with Nuvia mainly revolves around the lack of UOM data. We also run into wrong descriptions, UOM (when it's there), and HCPCS from time to time. Powersourcing is a great tool but the output file requires validation to ensure it pulling correct data. If you're a Vizient customer I understand they have a solution but haven't looked into it.

unknown

Hey Kat-We saw inconsistencies with 'like' items not having the same standardized description layout, incorrect sizes, sizes appearing in different category buckets and items being classified as 'discerned', but did not have a UOM and Q/UOM breakdown, to name a few.

Copyright © 2025 Infor. All rights reserved.