Here you can find questions and answers regarding IMDS content and usage in several categories. To see the content of each category and to read the answer to a question, please click on the category/question to expand the content.
You find OEM-specific IMDS documentation for suppliers in the Help category "OEM Specific Information" (no longer under FAQ).
Why are the Inhouse Norms entered for materials not seen by
the recipients?
In order to avoid complete transparency within the supply chain, the inhouse norms which are entered for certain materials can only be seen by the intended automobile manufacturer.
This means users in only two companies can see this information:
The material creating company.
The specific IMDS company that owns the norm (example, if the OEM has sister companies, only users in a single company that relates to the norm can see it).
If a user is in any other company along the supply chain, there will not be any information displayed.
By use of this feature, a single supplier may have many customers for the same material and no one will know except the material supplier. Asking for this information in the REMARK field is not desired and defeats the security built into IMDS.
Is there any information as to how the UNS system maps to
NA standards?
This list for download gives an overview on the IMDS Committee published materials with NA norms/standards. A value from the UNS (Unified Numbering System) is used as the standard material number. A standard material number uniquely identifies the chemical content of a material while many norms can apply to a range of chemical composition. In some special cases there can be a minor deviation between the chemical composition in the UNS number and in the standard (ASTM, SAE etc.). In this case the standard probably has been updated. The update of the UNS composition may be later. In this case the chemical composition which is defined in the standard (ASTM, SAE etc.) is valid. But for the documentation in IMDS the UNS materials published by the SC can be used.
A guideline how to find materials that have such a UNS number is included in the presentation.
Where an update to an existing IMDS Committee material has be created, the old versions of the MDS is hidden and cannot be found for new MDSs. If old materials are in a tree structure of a MDS, they can be used and need not be updated.
Is there any information on materials published to the Japanese
Norms/Standards?
This list for download gives an overview on the Japanese norms/standards, which were updated in November 2007.
A guideline how to find materials which have such a norm/standard referenced you can download here.
Approximately 80 new materials have been published to the JIS standards. Approximately 700 existing materials have been updated and merged. Furthermore, 100 existing materials were deactivated. The deactivated materials attached to existing data sheets can still be used. However, they are no longer available for constructing new or new versions of data sheets.
