Specright — First purpose-built platform for Specification Data Management™

Specification Data Management™ has been a relatively new term in manufacturing but is already making a significant impact on the industry. Going beyond traditional product data management systems, Specification Data Management provides a single source of truth for DNA-level data that can be shared across departments and organizations to ensure seamless production, intelligent procurement, and optimized transportation along the supply chain. In addition, specification Management software helps companies manage product specifications across their entire supply chain. This type of software is used to define product and packaging specs, work with suppliers to meet specifications, and comply with quality standards and sustainability regulations. 

Specright is the first purpose-built platform for Specification Data Management™. Whether it’s packaging, raw materials, formulas, products, or machines, Specright helps companies digitize, map, and take action across their supply chain to reduce costs, increase profitability, and drive sustainability. Its customers operate in agriculture, automotive, cosmetics, food & beverage, manufacturing, FMCG/CPG, medical, or any industry reliant on accurate specifications. Founded in late 2014, Specright is privately held and headquartered in Irvine, California.

Specification Management

The premise of specification management is that everything should start with the DNA level of products and packaging. It’s not enough to simply digitize specifications; they must be mapped and interconnected to drive intelligence. Once you digitize and map specifications in a single source of truth, it becomes easy and effective to layer on the right workflows, approvals, and processes. It also enables you to achieve outcomes ranging from improved supplier collaboration, sustainability, and consolidating SKUs.

Raw Materials Management: DNA-level data usually start at the raw material level. There are specs for everything from soil to aluminum and even water. By managing raw material specifications as a building block of product specifications, companies can easily track sustainability and find ways to improve the product life cycle.

Formula and Ingredients Management: When brands move formulas, ingredients, and other specification documents from static PDFs and spreadsheets to interconnected, digital product specifications, it becomes easier to manage what ingredients even enter the supply chain to begin with. This formula workbench provides visibility into how products are related to one another across brands and enables other departments like purchasing to better procure ingredients. This connectivity also enables companies to ensure compliance with regulations such as the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), leverage automated safeguards to prevent incorrect claims, and enable more streamlined ingredient procurement.

Packaging Management: Specright started Specification Data Management™ with the packaging because of its complexity. With 40 to 50 different types of packaging, each with its own critical data and relationship to products, brands, or retailers, Specification Management software makes it easy to manage existing packaging solutions and develop new packaging from existing specs or selecting existing solutions in place creating redundant SKUs.

Sub-Assemblies: A critical part of packaging or product data are sub-assemblies, which make up a part of a finished good. With Specright, brands can easily manage these relationships and understand how sub-assemblies relate to different finished goods. Companies can also leverage sub-assemblies when working with multiple partners to manufacture a final product, ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Labels & Artwork Management: Another packaging pain point typically revolves around labels and artwork management. While many products may share the same package, there is a high variance with labels and artworks. This is especially prevalent given the rise of personalization, private label, and globalization.

Bill of Materials Management: Bill of materials management is a critical part of specification management and managing product development. With Specification Data Management, the specs within a bill of materials are live, digital specs, and linked together to create a bill of materials. These linkages make it easy for companies to substitute products or ingredients or identify labels or packaging that need to be rebranded.

Ensure Quality Across Your Supply Chain

Specright’s specification-first approach to quality creates traceability and prevents issues before they occur. However, today’s interconnected supply chains require new ways of managing quality. With Specright’s Quality Management module, you have all the quality tools you need, connected to the product, supplier, and facility data to drive intelligence and traceability across your supply chain network. Most quality issues result from poor specification management. By establishing specification data as the center of your quality universe, you can create traceability and better identify and manage risk across the supply chain.

With Specright, you can easily log quality records like SCARS and customer complaints and link data such as lot codes to specifications or finished goods. This enables root cause analysis for increased speed-to-resolution. Supply chain risk is genuine and comes in different forms: food safety, mislabeling, the list goes on. With Specright, quality professionals can automate data streams from suppliers and auto-scores critical data points such as COAs against acceptable baselines to flag issues quickly as soon as they happen.

Supplier Management Software

The market demands more and more of your products – and while consumers may ultimately win, this pressure has strained the relationship between brands and suppliers. As a result, demand planning is more important than ever, and buyers and suppliers must work together to ensure the availability of materials at the right time in the right quantities at the right price. Changing regulatory environments, higher SKU counts to meet consumer needs, and increasing desire to be sustainable all require a new approach to vendor management and supply chain planning, which leverages Supplier Management Software.

With Specright’s Specification Management platform, suppliers can access a digital, up-to-date specification controlled by the brand. That means there are no more duplicating specs across suppliers. All data is in real-time at scale, so suppliers can trust they’re receiving the latest version of specs. Using the supplier collaboration portal, suppliers and vendors can better understand a brand’s direct materials needs, enabling them to improve their execution process.

Meet the CEO

Matthew Wright is the Founder and CEO of Specright. He has been in the packaging industry for over 25 years. Matthew developed the concept of specright from years of experience, seeing how the lack of a standard way of sharing specification data between companies leads to inefficiencies and waste. Prior to founding Specright, he held leadership positions at International Paper, Temple Inland, and rightPAQ - a packaging company he co-founded. Matthew sits on the Packaging Advisory Board at Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo and has also been involved in leading multiple M&A deals in the packaging industry.

“Digitize & manage all your specification data – from raw materials, ingredients, and formulas, to packaging and finished goods – and collaborate across teams and suppliers with Specright.”

“Designers want to design, producers, want to produce, and that can’t happen efficiently unless there’s a standard way of doing things. With this realization, Specright’s Specification Management platform was born and has grown to serve multiple industries and stakeholders across the supply chain.”