Who killed the thread pitch? A product data murder mystery

Episode 23 - Who killed the thread pitch? A product data murder mystery - Transcript

Matt: Welcome to Data vs. Commerce, where we explore the messy middle between database and doorstep. I'm Matt Johnson.

Floyd: And I'm Floyd Blaikie. Let's dig in.

Floyd: Matt, welcome to our spooky Halloween episode of Data vs. Commerce. Are you a big Halloween guy?

Matt: You know, my kids are just at that point where they're starting to no longer do trick-or-treating. So that's sad. But yes, this used to be a big, big holiday for us. And I still dress up as Gandalf, Floyd.

I still have my Gandalf hat and...

Floyd: No way.

Matt: Yeah. Even if we're just chilling at home, handing out candy.

Floyd: Heck yeah. Heck yeah. Oh my gosh, I love that. I love that I just learned that about you. I also love Halloween. I don't like scary stuff though, let me be clear. If it's cute spooky, like a little bit creepy, but miss me with the gore and the horror.

Matt: Yeah, like Disney Haunted Mansion stuff, yeah...

Floyd: Exactly.

Matt: You know, I'm down with that too...

Floyd: Exactly, the wimpy stuff. But Matt, I thought that instead of a normal episode we could do a little Halloween drama of our own. Are you in?

Matt: Let's do it. I'm excited.

Floyd: This is gonna be weird, but I also think it's gonna be really fun and hopefully informative too, so let's dive in.

Matt: I'm excited. Let's do it. I've always wanted to do a radio drama.

Floyd: And it is. It's a radio drama. Everything in it we have made up, okay? The manufacturer, the distributor, the food plant, everyone who works there. And just full disclosure, every voice you're gonna hear besides ours is in fact AI generated.

Yeah, you know, which I thought we weren't gonna talk about AI ever again, but here we are using it. So yeah...

Matt: Do it right...

Floyd: ...do with that what you will. We're gonna follow one part through five handoffs, all the way from a spec sheet to a purchasing agent, okay, in this futuristic Halloween horror story.

Each person only hears what the person before them said, so basically it's telephone played with a supply chain. You ever play telephone at a party, Matt? Halloween party maybe?

Matt: Yeah, exactly, and when I was trying to explain to my kids what it is that we do for our customers I said, "It's kinda like that game we played, right?"

Floyd: Mm-hmm. It really is, and that was a good way of explaining it.

Matt: And then I realized, oh man, we should start talking about it in terms of the broken telephone game. So...

Floyd: Exactly...

Matt: ...yeah, and so we're gonna talk about this bolt. The story is all around this bolt, right? And I like that because it's the smallest, simplest part, and yet...

Floyd: Mm-hmm.

Matt: ...an entire assembly line could potentially fall because of that part being off. So this is a good one.

Floyd: Absolutely. Okay, as you're listening to our very professional radio drama, keep an ear on eight different things. Size, length, thread pitch, material, thread length, standard, head size, and how many come in the box.

And we're gonna see how many are brutally murdered by the end. So Matt, you've got the spec sheet. Read it off to us.

Matt: All right, going back to my product management days here. Bear with me. This could be a little dry. Kestrel & Hale Fasteners, part number KH9601040A4, hexagon head bolt, partially threaded, metric fine pitch to DIN 960.

Nominal diameter M10, thread pitch 1.25 millimeters, fine thread. Length under head, 40 millimeters. Thread length, 26 millimeters. The remaining 14 millimeters is plain shank. Width across flats, 17 millimeters. Material, austenitic stainless steel grade 316, property class A4-70, plain finish, no coating. Packed 50 per box.

Application note, specified for conveyor guard brackets in food processing environments with chlorinated wash down. Do not substitute A2 or 304 material. Do not substitute coarse thread. Mating holes on this equipment are tapped M10 by 1.25.

Floyd: Wow. You weren't kidding. It was a little dry. And that last paragraph, that's the one that's gonna die first, isn't it?

Matt: It is. The paragraphs don't survive much in this game of telephone, unfortunately. All right, let's go find out what happens first.

Narrator: Monday morning at Larkspur Industrial Supply.

Dana works in item setup, and this morning she's adding the Kestrel & Hale bolt to the ERP. The short description holds forty characters. The template has fields for size, length, material, and finish, and that's all it has. When she's done, she leaves a voice memo for the next person.

Dana: Hi. Okay, it's Dana in item setup. Got the Kestrel & Hale sheet, set it up this morning. So the short description is H-E-X space B-O-L-T space M ten X forty space S-S space P-T space five O dash P dash K. That's twenty-six characters, so I had room to spare. Size M ten, length forty. Material, I picked stainless.

The dropdown is stainless, carbon, or zinc-plated, so there's no spot for a grade. Finish is plain. PT is partial thread. There was a whole paragraph about thread pitch and food plants and do not substitute, and there's no field for any of that, so I pasted it into the long description. Category is fasteners, then bolts, then hex.

It goes live tomorrow. Bye.

Floyd: Hmm. So technically at this point nothing is dead yet. Nobody has been murdered. Every word of that spec sheet is still in the system.

Matt: Yeah. It's in the long description, but yeah.

Floyd: In the long description.

Matt: Yeah, and that's typically where good data goes to die.

Floyd: Oh, the description graveyard. It is the field that catches everything that the template didn't plan for and nothing downstream ever, ever, ever reads it.

Matt: Yep, and, you know, this is common, right? Dana actually did everything right here. You know, she filled in every field that she had. The template decided what a bolt is, right? And somebody built that template probably 20 years ago, right? For whatever ERP needed it. So that's pretty common, but I'm not blaming Dana yet.

Floyd: So in that template at a typical distributor, how does that tend to compare to what's on the manufacturer's spec sheet? Is it the same? Sounds like it might be a bit different.

Matt: Well, it's definitely different, right? Again, this is the challenge of distributors and it's why their data, you know, often is the place where it falls apart in the supply chain.

And that's because they've got to account for all of the different types of parts as well as all of the different manufacturers and the way that they describe those parts. So yeah, it's pretty typical that you're gonna have either a scenario where you have a lot of duplicates or you're missing attributes.

But oftentimes it's mostly just around just not having the depth, right? Keep it simple so that you don't make a mistake, but simple ironically can lead to mistakes.

Floyd: So the first thing to go wrong in this whole murder mystery was a dropdown that only had three options in it.

Matt: Yeah. That's it. Stainless, carbon, zinc plated, right? Just pick one.

Floyd: And meanwhile, down the hall, Tyler's about to write the listing.

Narrator: Tyler writes product listings for Larkspur's website and its marketplace storefronts. He sees the short description and the fields Dana filled in and nothing else. His job is a title that gets found and three bullet points.

Tyler: It's Tyler. Okay, new listing for the M10 hex bolts. Title: Premium Stainless Steel Hex Bolts M10 by forty millimeters, fully threaded, grade eight strength, three-eighths inch equivalent, fifty-pack. Bullets. One, heavy-duty stainless construction resists rust and corrosion. Two, fully threaded for maximum grip in construction, marine, and automotive applications.

Three, compatible with standard M10 nuts and washers. Quick notes. I wasn't totally sure what PT meant. I think it's premium thread. Fully threaded is what people search for anyway, so I went with that. Every top seller in the category says grade eight, so I added it, and the three-eighths is for the US customers.

Okay, it's up.

Floyd: Okay. That was the first top where the bolt picked up new information instead of losing it, and it sounded to me like every bit of it was invented.

Matt: Yeah.

Floyd: Grade 8. What is... I thought he said grade A. What is grade 8?

Matt: Yeah, it's strength grade, right, for inch size alloy steel bolts, and it does not apply to stainless at all.

Floyd: Oh, great. So he's dressed it up in a very festive bestseller costume, 'cause he looked at whatever ranked first in the category...

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Floyd: ...and then he dressed the bolt up to match.

Matt: Yeah, and the 3/8 of an inch, what is that?

Floyd: Yeah, for the US customers. I've gotta own this one. I think this one's my fault.

Tyler's job is my job, right? A marketer writes for the search box to rank better in search, and that...

Matt: Mm...

Floyd: ...rewards targeting the words that buyers type. The engineer's words on the spec sheet, although they are more correct, don't rank.

Matt: Yeah, so, you know, that's a problem, because if thread pitch is in a field, how can it be filtered and actually found?

Floyd: Mm. So what does a buyer who knows exactly what they need do on a site like that?

Matt: Well, you know, this is where you're typing into the search bar, and you're finding no results. And then you're going to the filters, and...

Floyd: Mm...

Matt: ...you can't find the filter you're looking for. So yeah, how do you find it? You don't. You call a rep.

Floyd: Oh. Okay, hold onto this listing, because something a lot faster than Tyler is gonna read it later, and it's going to believe every word that it says. But first, the phone rings.

Narrator: Two days later, on Larkspur's inside sales desk, Marcus has the web listing open on his screen when the phone rings. Larkspur records all its calls.

Marcus: Larkspur, this is Marcus.

Ray: Hey Marcus, Ray over at the plant. I need hex bolts for a conveyor guard, M 10 by 40, stainless. The old box said Kestrel something, but it went in the garbage.

Marcus: No problem. Yep, I've got M 10 by 40 stainless hex, fully threaded, grade 8, 50 to a box.

Ray: Same thread as what's in there now?

Marcus: Yeah, it's standard M 10.

Ray: They're going into tapped holes in the frame, not nuts.

Marcus: Should be fine. M 10's M 10.

Ray: And they're good with the wash down? We hit that line with chlorine every night.

Marcus: They're stainless, so they won't rust. I'll send you the quote.

Ray: Perfect. I'll have Linda put the PO in.

Floyd: So Ray asked exactly the right question, and he even asked it twice.

Matt: Yep. Same thread as what's in there, and good with the wash down. Those are the two I'd ask. Those are what's critical in this order.

Floyd: And he got a very confident wrong answer both times, because Marcus answered from the only screen that he had open.

The right answer was sitting in that long description graveyard we talked about earlier.

Matt: Coarse is the default for M10, right? 1.5 millimeters.

Floyd: Mm-hmm.

Matt: This bolt is fine thread, 1.25. Force a coarse bolt into a fine threaded hole and you strip the frame. Now you're re-tapping a conveyor instead of just replacing a bolt.

Floyd: That sounds bad.

I was back on my usual activity of reading industry reports earlier today and I saw Fastenal recently reported its third quarter, and contrary to everything we read about distributors and manufacturers and e-commerce, in the last report we talked about, more than 61% of its sales were digital, and a big piece of that comes from more than 143,000 bins and vending machines that are sitting on customers' floors.

Matt: Yeah. And those bins are brilliant. And they already know the part number.

Floyd: Okay. So that whole business skips Marcus, and also Ray threw out the box.

Matt: Yeah, so I mean, going off of just the box alone is a big problem, right? And if it goes in the garbage, good luck.

Floyd: That's the last physical copy of the spec sheet essentially, and it's in the garbage with, you know, this morning's coffee grounds.

Okay, now Ray hangs up and he walks over to purchasing.

Narrator: Linda is in purchasing at the food plant. Ray told her what he needs. She'll enter it in the procurement system as a repeat item so it reorders on its own next time.

Linda: Hi, Linda in purchasing. I set Ray's bolts up as a repeat item, so he doesn't have to call next time. Item, hex bolt M10 by forty, stainless, standard thread. Quantity, one box. Preferred supplier, Larkspur. I ticked allow equivalent substitutes because finance wants three quotes on anything under five hundred dollars.

Notes field says, "For conveyor guard, Ray." And that's it. It's in.

Floyd: So Linda did exactly what her job is asking her to do, right? She made it easier, or so she thought, by ticking off a reorder checkbox. So one tick on that box turns a part into a description of something that needs to be ordered over and over again. And if you are a telephone game nerd, like I suspect Matt might be, the chain doesn't only add mistakes in, it also sheds them.

So sometimes that works out. Grade eight dropped off because Linda had no use for it. If that had been an actual important part of the spec, it would be gone by now. So although we lost a bad one, the right specs still have not come back.

Matt: Yeah, and, you know, think about this from just an ongoing sales customer service perspective.

The potential to lose the customer is very high because your customer is holding the right description instead of you, right? And so that means that really any other supplier out there who has a better understanding of what the customer needs is liable to get that order, right, instead of you guys.

So that's...

Floyd: Mm...

Matt: ...again, you have to be the source of truth in the relationship.

Floyd: And so many retailers, distributors, other folks who sell online are bringing in agentic ordering. DoorDash did it this month, agentic ordering for offices and corporate customers. I know that Walmart is launching agent profiles that are gonna have spending caps with pretty free reign under those next month in November.

So what Linda did is she just plugged a purchasing agent into that system, so you can guess what happens next.

Narrator: The plant's new AI purchasing agent picks up Linda's repeat item. It has permission to buy equivalents and a spending cap. It searches the approved suppliers for the best match, buys it, and reports back.

AI Agent: Reorder complete for repeat item, hex bolt M10 by 40, stainless, standard thread. I compared 14 listings from three approved suppliers. Selected hexagon head screw M10 by 1.5 by 40 millimeters, fully threaded, ISO 4017, stainless steel A2-70, 16 millimeters across flats, pack of 100. This item matches every specified attribute.

The standard thread pitch for M10 is 1.5 millimeters. The unit price is 31% lower than Larkspur's, and the larger pack reduces how often this item needs to be reordered. Expected delivery, Thursday. Total savings on this order, $11.40.

Floyd: It's right, you know? It matched every attribute it was given.

Matt: Yeah, every single one.

Floyd: Okay, let's count the bodies now. All right, I got the spec sheet.

Matt: Read it to me like it's Monday morning still and nothing has gone wrong.

Floyd: All right. Ready? Here we go.

Matt: Uh-huh.

Floyd: M10.

Matt: That made it.

Floyd: 40 millimeters.

Matt: That made it. We're two for two.

Floyd: Okay. Grade 316 stainless.

Matt: Ooh, that one died in Dana's dropdown, and so did grade 8 after the fact. All she had to choose from was stainless, carbon, or zinc plated.

Floyd: Yep. What about this one? DIN 960, 17 millimeters across flats.

Matt: That one's in the long descriptions graveyard. Dana ended up burying three things before lunch.

Floyd: Very spooky. All right. Partially threaded, 26 millimeters of thread.

Matt: That one died because Tyler decided that PT meant premium thread.

Floyd: Yep. All right. Thread pitch 1.25, fine thread.

Matt: Ooh, we heard that one die, and its death rattle was M10's M10.

Floyd: All right, 50 to a box.

Matt: The AI agent bought 100, and it is very proud of that fact.

Floyd: And how about the brand?

Matt: Poor Kestrel & Hale, they went in the garbage along with the box, and Linda's checkbox made sure that nobody ever went looking for them again.

Floyd: That's...

Matt: Yeah, I mean, it's a fictional horror story but not too far from reality. It's about...

Floyd: ...two out of eight made it through.

Matt: Uh-huh.

Floyd: Three, if you're very generous about stainless.

Matt: Yeah, and I'm not, of course. So Ray's pretty lucky it doesn't fit by the way, right? So say he actually, you know, gets one in.

Floyd: Oh.

Matt: It's 304, and...

Floyd: Yep...

Matt: ...304 pits in a chlorine wash. That line gets hosed down every night, and probably sometime in the spring those brackets are breaking off.

Floyd: Ugh, and nobody can trace that murder back to Linda's checkbox.

Matt: No, and nobody traces it back at all, ever. It goes in the maintenance log as a bolt that failed, simple as that.

Floyd: So where would you have saved it?

Matt: So the first transition is the most important, right? A field for thread pitch and a grade in the dropdown would go a long way.

Marcus would have had the right answer on his screen when Ray called. So on Thursday morning, Ray opens the box. There's 100 bolts, they look exactly like the old ones. The wrench that he carries around in his tool belt is a size too big for them. That's the first clue. He would start one by hand. It bites about a turn and a half, and then it stops.

If he forces it, he strips the frame. If he calls Larkspur, Marcus pulls up a listing that says grade 8, and in the plant's procurement system the agent's report is still sitting there, order complete, every attribute matched, savings $11.40.

Floyd: Ooh. It's so spooky. Matt, I'm having a lot of fun playing product data telephone, and if listeners wanna play it too, I do believe they're going to have that opportunity to do it with you coming up on November, correct me if I'm wrong, 2nd.

Tell me about that.

Matt: Yeah, we are playing this game at the B2B eCommerce World in Indianapolis. This is the sort of our way of explaining exactly how we help B2B eCommerce teams. So we will be playing this at our table. We'll have some Legos, for all you Lego nerds out there. I know you're out there, like me.

We'll be giving away some Legos, and come and see the pain that these data teams face every day, and we'll learn more about, you know, maybe the right way of doing this.

Floyd: You can find Pivotree at Table 57 at B2B eCommerce World, and then it's going to be a Data vs. Commerce live episode November 9th, 10th, and 11th in Atlanta, 'cause we're gonna be at B2B Online East.

I'm gonna be there. They're letting me out of Canada for this one. And we'll play the same game, so make sure you come by. Our booth is 306 there. And you could win Lego, which is pretty cool. I just bought it this morning, and I can tell you it is exciting. And I'm... One of them might fall off the truck right into my hands, let's be honest.

Matt: Yeah. And forget about, you know, candy. I mean, we got Legos, and...

Floyd: We got some pretty sweet Squishies that we're gonna be giving away. So... Imean, come on. This is humiliating. I'm playing with one right now. This is a little treat for the people who are watching instead of just listening.

This is the exact Squishy you can get at our table.

Matt: Oh, that's satisfying...

Floyd: ...I ordered 499 of them. I don't know where that other one went.

Matt: Wow. This is a limited time edition, the Pivotree Squishy. So let me just say you guys better get in line and get this, 'cause I have a feeling they're gonna be sold out pretty soon.

Floyd: Just treats, no tricks. All right, Matt, happy Halloween. I'll see you here next week.

Matt: Happy Halloween.

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