eClass

Just to confuse things there are two category based classification systems called eclass. 

• NHS eclass and
• German eclass

NHS eclass

NHS eclass is just the first 3 letters of NSV, there has been some divergence from NSV headings, however most categories are still the same as the original top 3 levels of NSV, and there are still around 2,500

e2class is a more flexible hierarchy than NSV, and so e2class for NHS can support the NHS eclass headings linking down through 4th and 5th level NSV heading to the underlying codes.

German eclass - ecl@ss

Is a 4 level hierarchical category level classification system.  It does not go down to individual product items and comes from a background in the German Energy industry.  It has a similar number of categories to UNSPSC at 32,832 in release 6.2.  However, it has a significant improvement over UNSPSC in that it has standard attributes for categories, and these have been created for over 50% of sub-groups.

NSV and e2class can be completely mapped to ecl@ss, since they have about 20x as much information as ecl@ss.  It is only possible to go back to NSV/e2class at heading level from ecl@ss.