It had been a long day.

We were in the beginning design stages of an implementation plan for a new large-scale ERP system for a grower. We had been in a planning and discovery meeting most of the day.

As we were starting to “debate” how the items should be setup and configured in the new system one of the implementation team said the following:

“The most important question in our industry is “What is it?””

                                                            Matt Holland, Director of Implementation, Practical Software Solutions

At the time, at the end of the day of long meetings, where all you want is a cold, refreshing beverage, I thought it was almost funny and unnecessary to say. But as I have helped many growers with many different systems in the subsequent years, I came to appreciate the wisdom in Matt’s comment.

Identifying your items properly so that employees in the yard or greenhouse know what they are is crucial to correct inventory and availability, to accurate picks, and sales order fulfillment.

Further, how the item is identified in the system is even more crucial as properly defining “what is it” across many aspects of the item, improves reporting, financial accuracy, planning visibility, and inventory operations.

What are some of the key important elements for system item identification?

ItemID or SKUID

The item or SKU ID is typically a numeric code, sometimes it is the database key for the given item.

Many growers use a 6–8-digit code to internally identify their items or SKUs.

If a grower is starting a new system, we recommend you don’t start at 1 for a 6-digit code, start at 100000.

Since some systems will pre-pend leading 0’s (depending on configuration and data type) and some will strip those off you can end up with mismatches when going between systems.

Having leading zeros complicates data flow between systems and automated data interpretations and increases chances for misidentification.

Some systems use what is referred to as a “uuid” – a universally unique identifier. A uuid is a mathematically generated string of characters used as an identifier and theoretically unique in all the world. They typically look something like this:

2eb85878-3f02-4ee9-be39-b06b45c2d8ef

Many applications and systems are starting to use these types of identifiers as they can help enhance security in certain attack vectors. A grower typically will not use this type of identifier on any printed materials, it may only exist in the database to guarantee uniqueness.

Item Code

Sometimes known as the inventory item code, this is typically a short alphanumeric set of abbreviations to identify a plant in just a few characters, it’s like a cognitive shortcut and provides a space limited method of identifying the plant.

For example, if I sell an ‘Acer Palmatum’ in a 3 gallon container it could be that I want the item code to be “ACEPAL3GL”.

There are many ways to encode this and many elements that growers use to create these short identifiers that are very useful in cases where space is limited.

Common Name

The common name is just that, the commonly known name. Sometimes a common name can incorporate colloquial or local/regional naming of a specific plant as well.

Sometimes the common names are pretty funny or interesting.

Southern Living published several funny examples:

There are many more.

Suffice it to say the common name is usually way more memorable than the botanical name (unless you are a scientist) and useful in communications.

Many growers usually use the common name for labeling, tagging, advertisements, reports, and other types of identifications.

Botanical Name

The botanical name, or Latin name is the scientific name comprised of the genus and species of the plant. The University of Wisconsin-Madison master gardener site on plant names describes it this way:  “The genus and species names together comprise the scientific name that every plant (and animal, too) is given when first described by a scientist. These species names are recognized by botanists, horticulturists, and gardeners no matter where you go in the world.”

The site goes on to provide some examples of botanical names: “The species name is often (but not always) descriptive of some aspect of the plant. For example, splendid scarlet sage is Salvia splendens, northern red oak is Quercus rubra, and the hawthorn Crataegus missouriensis was named after the state of Missouri.”

Many growers include the botanical name in their item information because that is the universal unique name for the given plant and can provide additional clarity to any interaction with suppliers and customers.

Description

This is where you can put a full sentence together to clearly indicate what the item is, for example, “2.5 Gallon Acer Palmatum ‘Bloodgood’”, or “2.5QT 6PK Mango Lantana Bandana” or “4” Achillia Moonshine Yellow”

There are many ways to express a description, but the point is to make clear what the item is for all the various functions in your organization from planning to sourcing, maintenance, and logistics. As new employees come into your organization a good description helps improve the accuracy of the data and the actions.

Some growers and systems want multiple descriptions, say a long one with all words spelled out and a short one for special situations like printing some stakes or tags or reports where space is at a premium.

Grower inventory software usually supports multiple descriptions to handle the variety of situations encountered.

Genus/Variety

These allow the grower to further specify what the item is. These can split out the botanical name. Sometimes a grower needs to search for a particular genus regardless of size or condition or a specific variety. Having these elements in separate fields can allow for more specific searching, and reporting.

Category

Many growers use a high-level category like “Tree”, “Shrub”, “Annual”, “Perennial” etc. to have a high-level classification of items.

Type

Growers differ on the use of type. Some use this field to denote a “raw material” versus a “finished item” or a “bump up”. Some annual growers use this to show a “Combo” as well where multiple genus inputs are used to form a larger finished item.

Our tree growers could use “Field” or “B&B” for ball and burlap or “BR” for bare root items.

Some growers may have other type descriptions based on how the business has grouped items or sales or production.

Size

Sizes are ubiquitous in our industry and there are multiple standards for showing size. Usually, growers encode the size in a short code, say a 5 gallon container item is “5G” or “5GAL” for example. For propagation growers a 72-cell tray could be a “72T” or just “72” for example.

Sometimes our growers who focus on trees use this to indicate a caliper size, say “1-1.5” in for example.

Greenhouse growers must also deal with all the “packs”, 4-Packs, 6-Packs (not that kind), 8-Packs, and so forth as the size.

Some growers use the inches scale like a 4” pot or 10” hanging basket whereas others use volumetric sizes like 1 Quart or 2 Gallons.

So the size field must be able to encode the sizes the grower uses (whether numeric or textual) and hence allow the grower to group and report as needed.

Unit of Measure (UOM)

Having a unit of measure indicator helps clarify what the item is to your employees and customers. For example, many annual growers have a “2.5QT” item but they grow it in flats of 6 or 8 as a way to improve handling efficiency.

Propagation growers use “Trays” or some call them “Flats”.

For singular items, like our 5 Gallon example above, that would be typically encoded as an “Each” or “EA”.

Annual growers sometimes sell “flats of packs” for example when they sell a 406 in a flat of 8.

There are a lot of combinations, but the unit of measure is important for clarity in identification, accuracy of operations, and pricing.

Color

This one is hard in our industry. With all the new genetic varieties that have multi colors, especially in annuals, and blooming perennials and shrubs, it can be hard to encode several colors into one code field and give it meaning for your employees or customers.

I did a large system implementation a few years back where we did the Item analysis on a large annual and perennial grower and ended up with over 600 unique color codes. This may be useful for your operation or not.

Another possible way to express this complexity is to use multiple fields, say combining a “color code” with a “color description” field to allow a human to understand more easily what it is.

On the other end of the spectrum, some growers just use this to encode what one of my colleagues used to call the “ROYGBIV” colors, essentially the colors of the rainbow, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

General Item “Dimensions”

Some systems use the term “dimensions” to identify additional generic columns in a database table or sheet that can also encode attributes regarding an item.

Usually, dimensions are found in very high-end ERP systems and business intelligence suites. However, many independent software vendors like AGS also provide these mechanisms in our software.

Dimension columns (sometimes referred to as generic groups or groupings) allow a grower to further sub-group and identify items.

For example, let’s say that a grower who does some annuals for retail garden centers and some trees for landscapers wanted to add a dimension (column) called ‘plant_customer’ and in that column use values for encoding the annual plants to the “Retail” customers and the trees to “Landscape” customers. Having additional dimensions can allow many types of groupings for reports and analytic insights.

Additional dimensions can be valuable but remember the more you add the more data maintenance you incur for new item setup.

The bottom line on Item Identification

If you can’t identify an item accurately your data is going to be suspect, and your inventory and sales fulfillment (and thereby customer satisfaction) is going to suffer.

Make sure any software or data analytics system you choose offers adequate capability to answer the most important question in our industry: “What is it?”

Find Out More

Learn more about how GrowPoint and GrowPoint Cloud can help you manage your operational inventory with sophisticated, yet easily approachable tools.

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