A Proposed Methodology for Automated Product Data Quality Rule Generation in the Retail Fast Moving Consumer Goods Sector.

Business operations are reliant on the electronic exchange of data, and are subject to difficulties caused primarily by poor data quality, leading to service failure throughout the supply chain. While the customer-oriented business sectors are well-served by available software solutions to these problems, few such solutions are available for the product-oriented industries. This paper describes ongoing work between the University of Glamorgan and industrial project partner GXS Ltd. to address the lack of software solutions to product data quality problems. Specifically, the paper reports on current data quality services offered, and establishes the need for automation of product data quality rule generation. A methodology for automated rule generation is proposed, framed within the requirements of the sector, and the stages of the rule generation algorithm are outlined. Sample results of the implemented stages of the algorithm are offered, and the future stages of development are outlined.