Services – STARLINK Middle East

The core of Starlink’s offerings in the market and the essence of what they are about.

Starlink provides full, turnkey solutions for customer that require the cleansing and standardization of their materials master data.

These services include:
Starlink MRO Cataloguing solution allows enterprise buyers and their suppliers to collaborate effectively in the creation of rich, accurate and up-to-date product information. This involves significant resources to process rich content information such as pictures, diagrams and specification sheets that need to be linked to each product or service.

Content Classification/Identification
Content Cleansing
Content Enrichment/Enhancement
Content Imaging

Starlink provides classification services to classify the products and services to well known global standard schema such as USC, UNSPSC, eCl@ss, MESC and SMD etc.

Starlink can provide classification services to classify the products and services to any in-house / proprietary schema of manufacturer/supplier in the domain of MRO, IT and Office Supplies.

Starlink team of experts can build a schema to specific domain tailored to customer needs. This comes with category codes, category definition, Characteristics names and Characteristics definitions cross reference to any existing schema.

Noun/Modifier Identification

Noun / modifiers help in unambiguously identify a product and helps in easy grouping the products. We assign Noun / Modifiers to products with the help of existing descriptions. Potential Duplicate Resolution Duplicates are identified and removed by adopting various permutations of pattern matching rules, database queries and manual inspection.

Re-arranging the description

Using our team of highly experienced content engineers, input descriptions are re-arranged in the order of “Noun, Modifier, Defining characteristics, Manufacturer Name, Part Number”. Starlink has also expertise in creating short description to limit number of characters.

Characteristics extraction

Starlink can provide characteristics extraction to any industry standard characteristics schema and can also develop new set of characteristics by using in-house our domain expert’s knowledge.

Standardization

Starlink can format the data entities such as Manufacturer/supplier names, Characteristics values, abbreviations, Unit of measurements etc to a uniform and consistent values based on a specific Style-guide.

Starlink can perform data enrichment by employing any or all the below steps.

By sourcing Manufacturer/Supplier website, We adopt the followings steps to enrich the data by using this method:

List of distinct Manufacturers are compiled from the input data
For each Manufacturer, his official / authorized web sources are collected. This task is performed by a separate team that is specialized in locating online resources.
Manufacturer website URLs, Images and Data sheets are recorded.
From the given input, descriptions are analyzed and appropriate Noun-modifiers are assigned (as per the Characteristics schema preferred by client).
If required, data classification and data cleansing is performed based on the customer’s preference.
Characteristics templates are selected for the individual Noun-modifier combinations and applied to the record.
Values are populated from the input and websites for these Characteristics.
Quality checks are carried out during the production process and before delivery

By contacting Manufacturer/Suppliers: Supplier sourcing or manual sourcing is the process whereby suppliers are directly contacted for product information when web scraping doesn’t yield results. Starlink will engage the suppliers to get product information in a time-bound and convenient manner. Suppliers are contacted by email / phone call / fax by Starlink representatives.

By plant walk-down: Starlink professionals are specialized in onsite sourcing of parts information. Starlink has executed several on-site projects and has gained valuable expertise. The information is sourced from various sources within the plant like Stores, Item Master, Purchase orders/requisitions, Codification rules, Tags, Nameplates, Catalogs, etc. Additionally, the items are physically assessed and measured to gather technical data.

Starlink provide material images by searching through Manufacturer’s catalogues, their websites and even by physical walkdown. Images are then resized, cleaned-up if required.

Structuring and compilation of a verified, accurate asset register to manage the asset throughout its life
Depreciation method application (wear and tear) on profit and loss statement
Assets portfolio on balance sheet for life cycle analysis
Workflow management / degree of automation on asset transactions (e.g. transfers, disposals)
History, transactions and ranking reports per responsible area definition
Configuration Management audit services
Engineering Content Baselines
Fixed Asset Innovations

Asset Governance

This approach has effective financial accounting and control as its primary objective.

Interim Upgrade of Fixed Asset Accounting

This approach provides an interim solution that allows / protects the future ability to move to option 3 without duplication of effort.

Integrated Fixed Asset Accounting & Asset Management

This approach adopts best practices for Fixed Asset Accounting and results in the best possible asset management and enables a solid foundation for Asset Risk management.

Asset Classification and Data
Capacity Condition Performance
Maintenance Strategy
Refurbishment Strategy
Budget Planning Project priorities
Resources Allocation

Demand Management System
Design Management System
Portfolio & Program Management System
Location Information system
Materials Management System
Plant Management System
Financial Management System
Risk Management System
Performance Tracking & Analysis System
Network Management System
Document Management System

Investment Decision / Criteria
Determine Alternative Solutions
Confirm Investments
Determine Investment Portfolio
Update and Manage Asset Plan
Asset Register
Optimize Asset Strategy
Spares
Develop / Maintain Standards

Solution Overview

Inventory Optimization

Star-Link through its xIO Inventory Optimization service, improves productivity, reduces maintenance inventory value and provides accurate lead-time information through proven optimization service solutions. This unique service identifies, quantifies, reports, optimizes and audits inventory operations activity – offering immediate payback with little disruption to your organization.
The xIO Inventory Optimizer, our flagship inventory reduction software service, has been successfully proven to reduce MRO inventory costs since 1996 – in refining, mining, food, transportation and automotive industries. xIO optimizes MRO inventory costs by immediately identifying declining stock, preventing the purchase of declining inventory items perpetually and automatically uncovers and stops stock out problems. The xIO has a self-audit function to continually update the benefits of the service and drive compliance.
The monthly xIO Inventory Optimization service automatically analyzes, adjusts, reports and audits all of the information required to support best practice inventory management and bring the inventory in line with your current business cycle – whether ebb or flow. Accurate lead times are calculated, appropriate order points and order quantities are determined and “action items” are reported.

All of this occurs regularly and automatically with no effort required by the purchasing professional. Time is freed up for more important tasks and supply chain initiatives. The results are:

Significant improvement in material availability that leads to increased productivity (usually 10% to 20%)
Substantial reduction in moving inventory value (usually 12%)
Complete program audit of all transactions, recommendations, results and compliance.