TL 9000 Product Category Tables

The Product Category Tables are Appendix A of the TL 9000 Measurements Handbook.

The Product Category Tables define a standard set of categories for the reporting of TL 9000 data. As the TL 9000 standard is adopted in more departments of telecom service providers and in the supply chain, it is frequently necessary to update these tables to include additional products. The tables are updated every 9-12 months, each update is approved by the QuEST Forum membership, and becomes part of the TL 9000 standard.

Each update is assigned a release number and is effective for a fixed period of time. The effective date applies to the date of the data being submitted and not the date of the data submission. For example, if a data submission is made in February 2008 for December 2007 data, the data submission is made under the definitions contained in Product Category Table 4.0 because Product Category Table 4.1 isn't effective until January 2008 data.

When a new product category table is released, TL 9000 registrants have six months to implement the rules in the new table. They can also use the table immediately on release which means that there are two tables in effect over the six months period.

New releases usually do not impact existing registrations and their data submissions. Even though the product category classifications are relatively static, product category definitions do sometime change so TL 9000 registrants should carefully examine each new release to see if the changes impact their registration. Each release is accompanied by a short paper describing the changes from the prior release of the tables.

See the table below to choose the product category table release that applies to your data. Note that data older than two years is not submitted nor resubmitted under TL 9000 so product category tables older than two years are obsolete and cannot be used.

NOTE: When two product category table releases are valid for data submission, data is submitted under only one of the product category table releases. The system will not allow data to be submitted under both releases. As soon as data is submitted under the newest release the older release is no longer available to use with new data submissions.

Release	Earliest Date of Data	Latest Date of Data	Status
Product Category Table Release 4.6 (PDF,1.4MB) Change History for PCT 4.6 (PDF,119KB)	November 2011	Not assigned	In use
Product Category Table Release 4.5 (PDF,1.4MB) Change History for PCT 4.5 (PDF,119KB)	January 2011	April 2012	In use
Product Category Table Release 4.2 (PDF,882KB) Change History for PCT 4.2 (PDF,256KB)	April 2010	June 2011	Resubmissions only
Product Category Table Release 4.1 (PDF,605KB) Change History for PCT 4.1 (PDF,24KB)	January 2008	September 2010	Resubmissions only

Older versions of the Product Category Tables are now obsolete but still available for reference.