Creating an Electronic Data Interchange System?

jgrumbles asks: "I've been in a PC support technician internship for the past 7 months for a polyethylene (plastic) pipe company which has doubled in size the past 4 years. I've been notified that management wants me to head a new initiative within the company. The main goal, in the beginning, is to basically restructure the slipshod EDI system they are using right now. The IT director even admits he should have had some training when implementing the system, but it was at the time of the boom so he had to do it as he went along. Are there any definitive EDI/E-Commerce information conglomerates, websites, listservs, groups, or other sources of information? My main mission will be to recreate the EDI system, which includes an AS/400 in a Windows environment, from scratch. Further down the road I'll be in charge of implementing technology in other areas such as getting RFIDs on every piece of pipe we ship in order to further automate tracking and billing. So, does anyone have suggestions on where to look for information and possible case studies?"

Re:Google and OLD IRON

[llefler]

Ok, this REALLY should have been one for google- even I admit that and I'm usually on the other side. Just how many hackers on slashdot do you think have even messed with EDI?

There are a few of us. Actually probably quite a lot of us.

Still, given IBM's movement to bladeservers,

Obviously you haven't, EDI is not about hardware. You should have googled too....

http://www.x12.org/ [x12.org] would be a good place to start.

Simply put, EDI is a set off transactions for communicating B2B. (Business to Business) Electronic orders, invoices, advanced ship notices (ASN), electronic Bills of Lading. They are flat text files with tokens (slashdotters will love that, it sounds like a config file).

Then of course there is XML EDI.

Re:Google and OLD IRON

[Skalizar]

The AS/400 is hardly old, although its possible his machine is. It's still being upgraded and improved, and one AS/400 (iSeries or i5 these days) can do the job of a rack full of blade servers. And while its doing that its far more reliable and was built from the ground up to handle databases. It NEVER crashes unless something is physically broken, and even that is rare since it usually detects hardware problems before they become critical. It handles our EDI just fine, although if you go with the industry standard Harbinger/Peregrin/whatever-they-call-themselves-t hese-days EDI software, it will be expensive due to the tiered pricing scheme.

For a good read on IBM iSeries, check out http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/lege nds/index_flat.html [ibm.com] .
--
A Slashdot "Hacker" who not only "messes" with EDI and the AS/400, but PLCs, industrial automation and RFID tags as well...

Re:Why?

[llefler]

Or, they could install a cheap Intel server and run something like Gentran [sterlingcommerce.com] to handle the actual EDI. This lets you map EDI data to file formats that your existing software can import/export.

Regardless, unless you find a package that handles EDI and communicates directly to the software you already run (which is rare), there is still going to be time required to learn how to create the proper maps. And if you deal with any large companies, you will find that many use their own 'flavor' of certain datasets.

Re:Develop Exit Strategy Now

[Linux_ho]

Seconded. EDI isn't something you can just jump into with no experience in the subject. Not without royally pissing off your business partners, anyway. Also check out a company called ICC: http://www.icc.net/en_US/oc/icc.net/ [icc.net] They are pretty good. The service they offer is most valuable in that they use internet standard protocols for data communication, dropping costs and sidestepping most of the big VANs which still charge exorbitant per-bit rates for data transfer. I'd contact ICC, confirm that your business partners are willing and able to communicate via their network, then ask ICC for recommendations on implementation consultants in your area.

Re:Google and OLD IRON

[llefler]

No, the point is that it's not a hardware issue. It can be done on AS/400, it can be done on VMS, it can be done on windows, and I would assume that it can be done on Linux.

It's like someone asking you how to do a mail merge, and you telling them to rip out MSOffice and Windows and install Linux and OpenOffice.

And no, it's not 'drop dead simple' to go from SQL to x12 EDI. Because there are going to be a lot of business rules in there. Most EDI is legacy, and companies are not using XML yet.

Links

[isj]

Knowing what to search for brings up these relevant links:
EDIFACT [unece.org]
X12 [x12.org]
How Radio Frequency Identification Affects EDI [dcs-is-edi.com]
Integration for Logistics: RFID, EDI, XML, and Beyond [builder.com]

If you are using an off-the-shelf inventory/billing system they you should probably consider letting someone else handle the integration and format-translation.

I have implemented an EDI system from scratch at my previous company. It was based on EDIFACT and email, and had extensive tracking&tracing, status feedback, error handling. The major challenge in implementing and EDI system is the integration with your EDI partners. It took 3 months from start of testing to the first real EDI message getting through, and almost a year before the workflow was right. Another challenge is that touches on legal responsibility - who said what, why, when.

I believe that ROI was good. No more manually entering 5 batches of 100 items every day. And the deadlines were improved so the final information set could be imported half an hour before work was initiated.

As far as I know the system is still chugging along 5 years after I left the company.