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(MISC) Apparel EDI Standards Followup
I very rarely post anything to the list however, I did receive a couple of
individual notes about my response to the person who wanted to know about
EDI in the apparel sector. One of these is contained, in part, below in
quotes. The remainder is my note back to that individual. The reason I am
sharing this with the group is the response back: "I think you should post
this to the EDI-L list".
"Yes, the National Retail Federation does not create new EDI documents like
purchase orders but they do have a major impact on some of the codes that
are transmitted within EDI documents."
Perhaps the better term for the NRF, as it relates to EDI, is complementary
standards to other industry EC standards.
I was involved with the original VICS EDI committees and spent a
considerable amount of time with others in developing the process
requirements and exchange formats (flat file and 832) to exchange item data.
We could not have done the relationship between the supplier's product id
(style-color-size), U.P.C., and the retailer's product ID with out the NRF
codes.
One little bit of history is in the mid 80's when VICS was trying to decide
on the standard for item identification, the preferred structure was the
style / color / size of the NRMA (now called NRF). However, they did not
like the OCRA symbology. What the VICS committee would have liked is for
the NRMA structure encoded into code 39, but the NRMA would not budge. The
CIO of Bullocks department stores, whose parent company owned Ralph's
grocery made the case for U.P.C. and convinced the rest of the executives to
adopt U.P.C. Then the next question of how do we transform this "license
plate" into something meaningful to a retailer who manages on style, color
and size, resulted in the VICS EDI 832 committee. The rest is living
history!
I think one of the most interesting things that is underway for the retail
sector is the efforts by EAN /UCC (now called GS1) in the area of standard
product classifications. Please note that I am not pushing EAN/UCC, however
this particular effort has real tangible benefits to the industry if it can
be pulled off; which I think it can. When combined with what UDEX is
professing with standardize attributes will be a huge leap in the area of
forecasting and consumer predictive analysis. Not many people understand
the potential of standardized attributes coupled with standardized product
classifications, but it will come.
The other item that has been talked about is standardized silhouettes for
apparel. This would be icing on the cake for forecasting and merchandising
systems as well as shelf management systems, but that is some time away.
James D. Sykes II
ARGOLIS, Inc.
1740 Pine St.
Martinez, CA 94553
Cell: 01.510.502.3333
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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