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CC3P and CMap

Between April 2009 and April 2010, the CC3P project in the CEN Workshop eCAT along with the provision of a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) completed mappings of a selection of product domains between the four major product classification systems used within Europe for product description in eBusiness activities: UNSPSC, CPV, eCl@ss and GPC. Mapping was established between all four systems, thus defining six sets of relationships. The mappings covered six product domains:
  • clothing,
  • furniture,
  • food,
  • laboratory materials (equipment and products),
  • electronics and
  • energy.
All classification codes of the above-mentioned six domains were mapped from the top level through to the most granular level. The CWA 16138:2010 “CC3P: Classification and catalogue systems for public and private procurement” together with the mapping tables in Annex B (.zip file) can be accessed here

While completing the mapping of six domains within the CC3P project, the resulting mapping does not cover the entirety of the four classification systems, but so far only about 10% of all domains covered by the four product classification systems. UNSPSC – the most extended system in terms of number of classes – comprises 55 domains, whereas the other classification systems contain between 27 and 45 domains, covering between 22 and 50 of the 55 UNSPSC domains.
A CC3P Brochure in English, French and German can be found here

As the first objective CMap plans to complete the mapping for all product domains of the four different classifications systems so far not covered by CC3P. While the CC3P project has shown that the required mapping between product classification systems needs intensive human intellectual effort, in CMap the support by software is essential. It is intended to generate and present the results of the mapping process by an easy to use and widely accessible tool.

As a second objective, CMap foresees the development of a methodology to define the processes, procedures, organizations and tools to enable an easy maintenance of the mappings. To this end a "virtual" synchronization between the four main product classification systems has to be designed. Under conventional concordancing methods the update of the mappings would be a large and in the long run unmanageable effort. CMap will therefore
  • provide a detailed analysis of the maintenance processes of the classification systems;
  • define an overall synchronization maintenance process of the mappings as defined in ePDC in order to create synchronization in releases;
  • recommend an optimal solution for the above. Would such a solution be decided by the stakeholders in the course of the project, the project team would adapt to this decision and provide input for the optimization of the decided solution;
  • efine rules to apply when one-to-one relationships between classification classes cannot be set;
  • define the formats of the files that feed the mapping system and the formats of the files used to circulate the mappings to other systems;
  • define the most suitable organization to be set  by DG Internal market to facilitate the updating and mapping of the CPV;
  • define the rules for migrating from one release of the mappings to the next one;
  • define a common format for the delta reports. Delta reports are issued by the product classification system authorities to indicate the differences between two versions (additions, merges, deletions, etc.). A common format will be needed to automate the mapping process;
  • provide recommendations for the functionalities that are required for such a tool as a mapping tool will be needed to store and display the mappings;
  • define the controls that are to be implemented for the integration of new mapping into the mapping tool;
  • define quality control processes and the rules that govern them. A quality indicator for the type of relationship (one-to-one, one-to-many, one-to-none, etc.) is needed to pilot the quality of the whole system.
Ideally CMap will lead to a mapping methodology suitable for procurement departments of both public and private sectors to enable content interoperability “just by pressing a button”. As a result, content interoperability will lead to the automatic data processing throughout various systems without causing additional effort. The mapping methodology will be applicable to any product classification system and therefore could be applied to systems that are not listed in this proposal.

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Last update: 2011-08-10

 
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