Here’s a scenario that plays out in thousands of organisations every day. Your engineering team calls it ‘bore diameter.’ Your ERP system has it as ‘ID_DIM.’ Your bearing supplier’s catalogue lists ‘inner diameter.’ Your German subsidiary uses ‘Innendurchmesser.’ They all mean exactly the same thing — but your systems don’t know that.
“The root cause isn't bad software or careless data entry. It's the absence of a controlled vocabulary — a single, authoritative reference that links all these different terms to the same underlying concept.”
The international standard ISO 29002 — newly published in 2026 after years of development — defines a solution called a concept dictionary. Think of it as a master reference list for product terminology. Rather than forcing everyone to use exactly the same words (which never works in practice), a concept dictionary links all the different terms for the same thing to a single entry, each with a clear definition and a unique machine-readable identifier.
This is different from the spreadsheet-based “data dictionaries” that many organisations maintain today. Those typically list class names and attribute names without formal definitions, without unique identifiers, and without any mechanism to handle equivalent terms across languages, suppliers, or systems. They work until you need to exchange data with anyone outside your own organisation — at which point they break down.
Without a concept dictionary, every data integration project starts with weeks of manual term mapping. When a new supplier comes on board, you repeat the process. When terminology changes, mappings break silently. Product data in English, German, French, and Mandarin lives in separate catalogues. Your ‘data dictionary’ is a spreadsheet with class names and labels but no definitions, no identifiers, and no way for machines to interpret the data automatically.
With a concept dictionary, terms from any source are linked to standard concepts via unique identifiers. New suppliers’ data maps to your system using the same mechanism. A search for ‘Kugellager’ returns the same results as ‘ball bearing’ — because the system knows they’re the same concept. Every term has a definition and a resolvable identifier. Data exchange is reliable because meaning is explicit, not assumed. Compliance and auditing become straightforward.
ISO 29002 isn’t a white paper or a best-practice guide. It’s a formal international standard, published in 2026 under ISO/TC 184/SC 4 (Industrial Data), consolidating years of technical specifications into a single, cohesive framework. It defines the data model, the exchange format, and the identification scheme that makes concept equivalence work in practice.
The standard is designed to work alongside other major industrial data standards — including ISO 8000 for data quality, ECLASS, ETIM, UNSPSC, and ISO 13584 for parts libraries. Adopting an ISO 29002-compliant approach doesn’t require replacing your existing systems or standards. It provides the interoperability layer that connects them.
A standards-based concept dictionary means your terminology work is portable. You’re not locked into a proprietary system. Your mappings, definitions, and identifiers conform to an internationally recognised specification — exchangeable with trading partners, validated by auditors, and maintained independently of any single vendor.
Does the platform implement a concept dictionary, or just a flat data dictionary? . A flat dictionary lists terms. A concept dictionary links equivalent terms across languages and sources via unique identifiers. The difference is fundamental to interoperability.
Are identifiers standards-based and resolvable? Look for IRDIs (International Registration Data Identifiers) as specified in ISO 29002. Proprietary identifiers work internally but break at organisational boundaries.
Can the system handle multiple classification schemes simultaneously? You'll likely need to map products across UNSPSC, ECLASS, ETIM, and potentially customs codes. The solution should support this natively, not as a bolt-on.
Does it support multi-language terminology? Not just translated labels, but semantically equivalent terms linked to the same concept — so a search in one language returns results across all languages.
Is the architecture ISO 8000-compliant? ISO 8000 provides the data quality framework within which concept dictionaries operate. Compliance ensures your data is auditable, exchangeable, and governed to a recognised standard.
Can expert mappings be captured and reused? ISO 29002 acknowledges that initial concept mapping requires human judgement. The platform should capture this expert work so it compounds over time rather than being repeated for each project.