EDI Transportation: History And Up-To-Date Position
EDI transportation branch offers progressive and effective technology solutions for shippers including third-party logistics. The goal of this post is to give a piece of enormous EDI knowledge to all parties somehow involved in modern business. Today some of you may find useful information about EDI transportation solution that will be necessary for building or developing your business.
EDI in transportation first of all is represented by transportation management systems. EDI for transport industry was one of the first branches of electronic data interchange that started to develop very quickly.
Transportation is an integral part of any kind of business, so EDI here may be called a reasoning solution. As it is known, the history of EDI itself began in transportation, and is closely connected to Transportation Data Coordinating Committee (TDCC) work. The main goal of TDCC was to develop and work on standards in electronic messaging that soon was transformed in ANSI X12 standard.
The main task of EDI was an effective replacement of e-mails and faxes. The principle of the EDI processing was to send electronic documents straight to receiver’s system (computer/application/management tool) and back. This gave the possibility to reduce manual interruption and errors while processing documents. Also this made the process quicker or even immediate. Today it is a usual thing that EDI business documents are exchanged with a flashlight speed.
As many parties involved in the business process had various management tools, a common standard for EDI was a must. The goal was to create general rules in order all computers can receive and interpret information properly. Today there exist some international standard bodies constantly working on developing and supporting EDI standardization, e.g. American National Standards Institute (ANSI X12) and the United Nations (EDI for Administration, Commerce and Trade – EDIFACT).
The worldwide EDI integration today shows that electronic data interchange became widely popular in transportation industry, so both large and small companies are on the way to the full adaption of the EDI at their enterprises.