Odette — The Working EDI Solution for the European Automotive Industry

Summary

The aim of this document is to show the audience the favourable ratio between the costs and benefits of EDI and to demonstrate how this new technology is inevitable for the growth of companies in view of the new scenario for Europe ’93, starting from the general concept of EDI and illustrating the ODETTE Project in Europe and in Italy. In particular, the first applications of EDI and ODETTE concepts in FIAT will be illustrated, showing clearly that this is a working solution for the automotive industry from both the technical as well as the economic point of view. It is structured as follows:

• (1) The first part — EDI, Electronic Data Interchange introduces the EDI concept. It describes the “scenario” in which EDI should be used, as well as the costs and the need for standardisation which this methodology involves.

• (2) The second part — EDI in Italy, describes the current EDI situation in Italy, what the Italian industry is currently doing in the EDI field and how the Public Administration works in terms of providing the necessary legislative support.

• (3) The third part—ODETTE, Organisation for Data Exchange by Tele Transmission in Europe, introduces ODETTE, the automotive EDI project to which the main European automotive manufacturers have delegated the task of perfecting the basic instrument for solving the logistical problems of companies: EDI. The third point also describes the structure and the organisation of this international project in terms of responsibility and participation.

• (4) The fourth part — ODETTE Italy, describes what the national automotive industry is doing and how it supports the activities of international standardisation.

• (5) The final section describes the history of EDI usage in FIAT and the current situation regarding the compatibility between domestic and standard systems.

• (6) The conclusions of the article give some information on the important savings that can be obtained with the use of standardised EDI, at this point considered the basic tool for business in the logistics area.