FIDX ADDRESSES UCC IMPACT ON
INDUSTRY STANDARDS Al Gorton of the Uniform Code Council (UCC) discussed UCC's recent acquisition of RosettaNet and UCC's plans to enhance their process for developing standards. His PowerPoint presentation can be viewed at www.FIDX.org. Al also discussed the results of a recent survey of FIDX member's participation in the UCC standards development process. To date, few FIDX members have actively participated in the process and those that have participated have voiced concern about the effectiveness of the process. Mary Frye, FIDX chair, emphasized that FIDX is very interested in working closely with the UCC, conforming with the UCC's new XML standards and encouraged all FIDX members to participate in the UCC standards development process. Geoff Mack and Theresa Jaynes discussed their participation in the UCC business requirement group (BRG) process for extending the "core" UCC purchase order standard. Geoff reviewed the schedule for enhancing the UCC purchase order standard to meet the needs of the furniture industry that were previously defined by FIDX. He also made recommendations how the UCC standard development process might be improved. Geoff's presentation can be viewed at www.FIDX.org and the UCC standards can be viewed at www.uc-council.org An email from Ames Flynn, President of the AFMA IT Division, was discussed. The email concerns which purchase order standard to use prior to UCC's enhancing their core standard. After much discussion by the group, it was decided that David Purvis will advise the AFMA IT Division that "FIDX is working with the UCC to ensure that the UCC standards (schemas) provide the functionality supported by the FIDX schemas as soon as possible. In the interim, FIDX recommends using the UCC core purchase order schema for the implementation of electronic order transactions. If the UCC core schema does not satisfy the industry needs, e.g., no support for multi-ship-to addresses or configured items, using the current FIDX schemas may allow implementation to proceed. However, if the FIDX schemas are used, it must be recognized that migration to the UCC schemas will be necessary when they satisfy the industry needs." David Purvis made a PowerPoint presentation on how the product identification process can resolve the problems created when multiple products are shipped in one carton. Several questions were raised and this topic will be discussed again at the next meeting. Mike Overholt was scheduled to present the proposed Inventory Inquiry and Advice schema but that discussion was deferred to the next meeting due to lack of time. The next FIDX meeting is tentatively scheduled for February 2003. The exact date and place will be announced in the next several weeks. |
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