What is the difference between catalog and inventory

Using established metadata standards will enhance the comparability of data inventories or catalogues, within and across agencies. A useful data inventory will be well-governed and support other data governance and management processes.

Well-governed means that it will have clear guidelines on what level of detail needs to accompany the attributes describing the data asset. This may include:. A well-governed data inventory will also have a person or team that supports and maintains it on an ongoing basis.

Records in a Data Inventory will need to be kept up to date for it to remain useful to the agency. The Data Inventory should also be made available to all staff for ease of maintenance and to realise the benefits of data discoverability. Whilst comprehensive coverage is desirable, it may be easier to prioritise efforts on operational data first, and then move onto corporate data.

This is a decision for agencies to make based on their resources and context. For agencies with multiple data inventories it may be necessary to consolidate these if they are legacy systems or contain duplicate records. Where multiple inventories are necessary, ensure the purpose and content of each one is clear. In such cases, agencies may wish to have some form of meta-catalogue, or catalogue of catalogues, to enable easy searching. Recording data in the inventory should not be a discrete activity; it must integrate with other data management processes.

Undertaking a data inventory and establishing standard cataloguing processes is an area where the Senior Data Leader and a CIO can lead together. As part of the Australian Government Agencies Privacy Code, agencies must keep an inventory formally described as a register of personal information holdings.

Given much of the personal information agencies hold are in datasets, the data inventory will satisfy this requirement. Alternatively, if no broader data inventory already exists, it may provide a starting point for a data inventory. Teams working on a Data Inventory should investigate, leverage and potentially adapt what already exists in an agency.

As agencies continue to develop their data maturity and capability, they may consider transitioning this inventory into a data catalogue. This opens up further possibilities and benefits, including automating a range of data management and governance processes, improving the discoverability of data, creating externally facing as well as internally facing catalogues and possibly aligning or integrating catalogues across agencies.

There are many off-the-shelf and open source cataloguing options available. It may be hard to know which one will suit your agency as there is no one-size-fits-all option. There are benefits to purchasing a vendor-supported product, but also benefits to using more flexible and cheaper open source software and even benefits to developing an agency-tailored catalogue in-house.

When selecting catalogue software specifically, some important considerations for agencies are that the catalogue:. It may be helpful for agencies to liaise with other agencies that have developed or purchased a data catalogue to understand the pros and cons of different systems and approaches. Home Data management Foundational four Asset discovery Share. Why identify data assets? Ensuring data is discoverable has many benefits: It can prevent data duplication and reduce costs. Where there is a lack of visibility of data holdings across an agency, data assets can be reproduced multiple times, often at a significant monetary cost or data management burden to the organisation 5.

Duplicated data assets might also be stored in multiple locations across an agency, resulting in increased technical infrastructure costs, data security risks and management overheads. Inventory includes the products you sell, as well as the materials and equipment needed to make them. Although the definition of stock is concise, there are four main types of inventory: raw materials, work in progress, MRO supplies and finished goods.

Stock includes finished products, parts, materials—whatever you sell to customers. The more stock—or products—you sell, the more revenue your business generates. Inventory includes finished products and all the assets a business owns or uses to complete production.

There are four main types of inventory. Raw materials are parts or components used to make a final product. For example, if your company manufactures HVAC parts , the raw materials used to make fan motors, compressors, or thermostats might include:. Work-in-progress, or work-in-process, inventory is still in production. Some examples are incomplete goods that require time to dry, seal, bond, or ferment before they are ready to be packaged and sold.

And WIP includes raw materials, labor, overhead, and other essentials needed to complete production. Items that support production but are not part of the finished product are MRO supplies. Finished goods are completed products that are packaged and ready to be sold. As demand for stock grows, or as stock levels decrease, raw materials and MRO supplies must be available for production.

How can you manage and track your stock and four types of inventory? Post by Moebius » Tue Dec 03, pm this post. Post by lyapkost » Wed Dec 04, am 1 person likes this post. Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 19 guests.

Privacy Terms Cookie Settings. Quick links. Inventory vs. Post by Moebius » Tue Dec 03, am this post Probably a trivial question, but this is something I've never really understood from the beginning: what is the difference between cataloging and inventorying a tape? What does each operation really do?