Discover how CH Master Data Astrein has built, product by product, from the data cleansing solution created in 2001 to the largest Master Data Management ecosystem.

The problem that no one had solved.

In the early 1990s, large Brazilian industries were grappling with silent chaos within their operations: duplicate records, generic descriptions, items impossible to locate, and erroneous purchases that generated excess inventory, high financial costs, and production stoppages.

The problem was known. The solution was not.

When CH was hired to solve the registration challenge for one of the largest companies in Brazil, it searched the entire world for a system capable of accurately managing master material data. It found nothing. The solution was to build from scratch, together with the client, something the market didn't yet know it needed.

The result was pioneering software, implemented in the early 1990s, that organized over 120,000 inventory items across 43 factories, reducing the volume to fewer than 43,000 certified items. This was work that didn't exist anywhere else in the world, and it became the backbone of what CH is today.

The turning point: from software to community.

As CH grew and served new clients, a pattern repeated itself: technicians went into the field, collected each component individually, built descriptions, and cataloged attributes. And when they arrived at the next client, they did it all again. A light bulb was a light bulb in any industry. A bearing was the same bearing in hundreds of plants. But each company treated that information as if it were unique and exclusive to them.

CH saw in this pattern an opportunity that would change its business model forever.

In 1998, development began on a system that would allow an item to be registered only once and that information to be shared with all customers who needed it. If one company already had the complete technical description of a particular valve, why would another company need to build that information from scratch?

Four years of development later, in 2001, Webformat was ready. TBG was the first client to adopt this new logic, inaugurating what CH still calls a technical information community.

The Golden Code CH: the part's CPF (Brazilian tax identification number).

For the collaborative model to work, each item needed to have a unique identity, independent of the code that each company used internally in its systems.

CH developed the Golden Code CH : a proprietary code assigned to each certified item, functioning like a social security number for the part. Connected to each client's internal codes, it allows different companies to recognize the same item, share technical information about it, and consult approved suppliers, all within the same ecosystem.

Today, CH's database contains over 6.5 million unique and standardized items, with more than 40 million items cleaned up throughout the company's history. It's like a Wikipedia of industrial technical data, with one key difference: each piece of information is certified, validated by experts, and continuously updated.

An ecosystem built product by product.

Through the collaborative community, CH has identified new recurring problems in the purchasing and supply operations of large industries, and has built specific solutions for each of them.

Webformat Materials and Services

It is the central platform of the ecosystem, used by more than 50,000 users daily. Through it, companies request new registrations, consult technical information, and contribute to enriching the Golden Records. Any and all updates made by a client are automatically reflected in the database of all others.

Webforlink Clients and Suppliers

Master data management isn't limited to physical materials. Customers and suppliers also need reliable, up-to-date records that comply with tax and legal requirements. Webforlink uses robots integrated with official bodies to ensure that business information is always accurate, eliminating compliance risks and delays in approval processes.

Vendor List

One of the biggest challenges for industrial buyers is finding qualified suppliers for specific items. Searching the open market is time-consuming and risky. CH created the Vendor List: a shared database of suppliers already approved by other companies in the community, associated with the CH Golden Code. The buyer searches for the item and immediately finds who has already supplied that product to other industries with a proven track record.

Surplus

Inventories of discontinued materials are a chronic financial problem in the industry. Equipment is replaced by a more modern model, and the spare parts remain unused, taking up space and generating provisions for losses in the balance sheets. Throwing them away has an accounting cost. Auctioning them off means a loss of value.

CH created Surplus: a solution that allows the exchange of surplus materials between companies in the community, valuing the item 100%. A company that doesn't use a particular part finds, within its own network, another company that needs exactly that item. Everyone wins: the company that donates frees up space and recovers value, and the company that receives acquires the material below market price.

Catalog Hub

Parts and equipment manufacturers play a critical role in the quality of master data, but historically they have been left out of the process. Catalog Hub changes that. The platform allows manufacturers to participate directly in the CH Community database, validate the technical information of their products, and keep their data always up-to-date. This provides the community with source-certified information, and the manufacturer gains visibility into how their products are positioned in hundreds of CH client companies.

CH Power MDG

For companies operating on SAP S/4HANA, the creation and standardization of materials in the MDG module is a critical and often slow process. CH Power MDG accelerates this process by connecting the client's SAP environment directly to the CH database, with access to over 6.5 million certified items and over 70,000 description standards. What used to take weeks now happens in a fraction of the time, with the technical quality guaranteed by the CH methodology.

Technological evolution

Over three decades, CH has weathered every major technological cycle in the industry.

The first software developed for Brahma ran on DOS, in Turbo Pascal, even before the internet existed commercially in Brazil. With the arrival of Windows, the system was rebuilt. With the internet, CH migrated to a web environment, starting to operate in ASP and then continuously evolving its architecture.

Today, artificial intelligence is already part of CH's internal processes, supporting the search and validation of technical information. But the company is clear about the limits of automation in this field: AI makes mistakes, and much of the information that CH manages is simply not publicly or structurally available. Manufacturers protect technical data for competitive reasons. There is information that can only be obtained through a direct call, an exchange of emails, with a specialist who knows what they are looking for.

This is precisely where one of CH's major competitive advantages lies: the combination of technology and specialized human expertise, something that automated tools are still unable to replicate.

30 years, 300 clients, global pioneering.

What began as an unsolved registration problem has become a globally recognized market category known as Master Data Management. Today, there are master data management companies in the United States, Italy, Spain, France, India, and China.

CH got there before all of them.

With over 300 active clients, 100 of them among the thousand largest companies in Brazil, more than 50,000 daily users on the platform, and a presence in international projects enabled by multinational clients, CH Master Data Astrein concludes its 30 years as what it always set out to be: the most complete and reliable solution on the market for those who need their data to be accurate.

Because incorrect data is costly. And CH knows this better than anyone.