Today’s product portfolios can contain hundreds of thousands SKUs. In some cases a company must manage several million. This is not to say a company will have this many product families. In fact, many of these SKUs are based on product configurations within a product family. For example a style of shoe can have a SKU for each gender, color, size and width. A family of sofas can have individual SKUs for fabric, color, pillows, and legs. A USB memory stick can have variations for memory size, color and indicator light.