TEMPORARY PAUSE>>>>that refreshes.......read on:
By Stannie Holt
Reprinted from
InfoWorld, Dec. 28,
1998 / Jan. 4, 1999 (Vol.
20/21, Issue 52/1)
ound by their typically closed enterprise resource planning (ERP)
systems, businesses are finding that sharing data electronically with
partners may be the toughest nut to crack in 1999. But some industries
are already looking to the Extensible Markup Language (XML) for
business-to-business supply-chain collaboration.
Agile Software, which sells applications to describe and configure complex
products, is proposing to make an XML-based open standard for supply-chain
collaboration in the electronics industry. Some observers think this could
deliver the "Holy Grail" of supply-chain planning: full, real-time information
sharing regardless of different software and platforms.
"It's very pragmatic ... basically a standardization of information everybody
has," said Bill Swanton, vice president of manufacturing strategies at AMR
Research, in Boston. "I think it's going to catch on really well because the
electronics folks have never felt standards have to be built from the ground
up."
Agile announced in mid-December that it is teaming up with the National
Electronics Manufacturing Initiative, contract electronics manufacturer
Solectron in Milpitas, Calif., and semiconductor distributor Marshall
Industries in El Monte, Calif., to propose an XML-based standard for
companies to exchange product information such as bills of materials or
engineering change orders.
"I'd like to see industry-wide support for this," because it would eliminate vast
amounts of busywork to deliver and decode various formats of bills and
product reports, said Ken Ouchi, CIO of Solectron.
XML, a cousin of the Web page language HTML, lets data objects such as
"customer," "item," and "price" be automatically attached to numbers and
words in an online document.
Solectron is supporting Agile's position on XML -- "[to] create a working
standard that's public and open and something everybody could embrace,"
Ouchi said.
XML is especially suited to business-to-business commerce and
collaboration, such as between semiconductor makers and equipment
manufacturers, because it is fast, flexible, platform-independent, and
Web-accessible, Ouchi said. This way, trading partners would not be
required to use the same supply-chain and manufacturing software, he
added.
The proposed XML standard will be offered to standards bodies such as the
World Wide Web Consortium and the Supply-Chain Council as an open,
nonproprietary set of specifications, an Agile representative said.
However, Ouchi said he hopes to see the standard catch on in the free
market, not get bogged down in, say, the International Organization for
Standardization certification process.
"They don't want buy-in issues to get in the way; the last thing you want [as
an electronics manufacturer] is something slowing you down," Swanton said.
Other companies are expected to sign on soon, in areas such as peripherals
and telecommunications as well as supply-chain collaboration software
vendors.
Agile and its partners plan to come up with standardized XML documents
such as change orders, deviations, and bills of materials, much the way the
electronic data interchange created standardized financial documents that
any company could use, Agile officials said.
The proposed standard was first aimed at the electronics industry because
that relies the most on outsourced manufacturing.
"You're certainly going to see similar things [in other industries]," Swanton
said. "Every discussion group we're in, everybody's planning something with
XML."
Agile itself could create a usable version of an XML standard in six to nine
months, but there's no telling how long certification by standards bodies
would take, the Agile representative said.
Agile Software Corp., in San Jose, Calif., is at agilesoft.com.
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