owed by a transaction trailer record. If the transaction contains more than one transaction, many purchase orders can be sent to one vendor, several transaction groups would be preceded by another type of record, referred to as a functional group header, and would be followed by a function group trailer.” One of the first places that EDI was implemented was in the purchasing operations of a business. Before the implementation of EDI, a purchasing system would allow buyers to review their material requirements, and then create purchase orders, which would be printed out and mailed. The supplier would receive the purchase order, and manually enter it into their customer shipping system. The material would be shipped, and an invoice would be printed, which would then be mailed back to the supplier. In this example, even if the purchased materials were shipped and received on the same day the purchase order was received, the cycle time could be as much as a week, depending on the mail and the backlog at the supplier's order entry system. With the introduction of EDI, this scenario changed dramatically. Purchasing agents would still review their material requirements and create their purchase orders, but instead of printing them out and mailing them, the purchase orders would be transmitted directly to the suppliers over an electronic network. On the supplier's end, the transaction would be automatically received and posted. This new process could allow the shipment of material on the same day the purchase order was sent. Suppliers could send their shipping documentation electronically to the buyer in the form of a shipment notification, providing the buyer with accurate receiving documents prior to the actual arrival of the material. The supplier gained an additional advantage as well, since now the invoice could be sent directly to the customer's accounts payable system, speeding payment to the supplier. Speed, Accuracy and Economy are the benefits of EDI. Whether execution of EDI was in the area of purchase orders, advanced shipment notification, or automatic invoicing, several immediate advantages could be realized by exchanging documents electronically. Information moving between computers moves more rapidly, and with little or no human interference. Sending an electronic message across the country takes minutes, or less. Mailing the same document will usually take a minimum of one day. Courier services can reduce the time, but increase the cost. Facsimile transmissions work well for small documents, but for several hundred pages, it's not a feasible option. When alternate means of document transfer are used, they suffer from the major drawback of requiring re-entry into the customer order system, admitting the opportunity of keying errors. However, information that passes directly between computers without having to be re-entered eliminates the chance of transcription error. There is almost no chance that the receiving computer will invert digits, or add an extra digit; thus ending the human error element. The cost of sending an electronic document is not a great deal more than regular first class postage. Add to that the cost reductions afforded by eliminating the re-keying of data, human handling, routing, and delivery. The result is a substantial reduction in the cost of a transaction. Expense, Networking Complexity, and Alternatives are the drawbacks of EDI. Although these benefits are convincing, actual acceptance and execution of EDI was far less common than might be expected. For all the benefits, the technological problems of EDI presented a number of major stumbling blocks. “Computers, especially mainframes, and their business application systems were complex and expensive. Primarily serving the “on the edge” functions of a business, they were not regarded as being fully joined into all business activities”. Traditionally, the mainframe-computing consciousness was viewed as an information reservoir. ED

Some topics in this essay:
Complexity Alternatives, Kroger Company, Data Interchange, CAO CAO, Customer Invoices, EDI Yes, Accuracy Economy, VAN's VAN, PC's UNIX, Transport EDIFACT, data interchange, electronic data, electronic data interchange, computer technology, electronic documents, material requirements, kroger company, customers suppliers, speed flexibility, execution edi, software packages, review material requirements, raw material requirements, material requirements create, requirements create purchase,