AIAG and ebXML
ABSTRACT
How does ebXML fit with the work of other industry standards groups? This panel will feature representatives from the Object Management Group (OMG), HR-XML, the Human Resources XML Consortium, the Open Travel Alliance, a DISA organization, and the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG). Each will provide information about how the work of their group relates to ebXML and their plans for the future.
Table of Contents
1. History of Involvement
In the past, the major North American automakers tended to have their own individual guidelines for EDI. These were based on their legacy systems, and tended to be just different enough to require special custom programming by their suppliers. Naturally, this added cost and time to implementations.
For this new ebXML global standardization effort, Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) members agreed to work toward commonizing requirements. We believe that this commonization, if we can achieve it, will result in faster, better, lower cost installations. In addition, we hope to reach all of those small enterprises which have not yet begun exchanging information electronically.
AIAG named five individuals to represent the organization at ebXML, but many other members also attend. When an individual's company was unable or unwilling to pay for their travel, the AIAG Board approved the necessary expenditure.
AIAG has been represented at every ebXML meeting
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One representative in November 1999
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Five official representatives during 2000
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Registry and Repository
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Technical Architecture
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Transport, Routing and Packaging
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Business Process
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Core Components
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Many other AIAG members participate
I won't go into the whole structure of the volunteer teams working at AIAG, but I will tell you that in the course of a year over 1000 individuals attend the various meetings. These people represent not only automakers, but also material suppliers and software and hardware vendors.
A very well-attended work group was formed to investigate possible uses for XML within the industry. This group has develop a strategic plan for implementation, and a cost/benefit analysis to aid members in convincing their own organizations to work with AIAG. In addition, member of this work group not only attend ebXML, but also OAGI, RosettaNet, X12, EWG, NEMI, ISO TC 154, and others. As you can imagine, the newly-formed company called Covisint is also very heavily involved.
We have held three ebXML Core Components Workshops, each limited to about twenty-five attendees. These workshops focused on two main efforts: updating the Catalog of Common Business Processes and discovering Core Components. The catalog has evolved to hundreds of business processes and includes the commonly used formats for electronic business, such as X12, EDIFACT, CII, OAG, RosettaNet.
The Core Components discovery process starts with process modeling, and ends with the discovery of data requirements for that business process. The work of AIAG has been taken to ebXML, in order to discover the commonalities with other types of businesses. Once more, our support of commonization, this time across industry boundaries.
Another very important work effort is to take the specifications produced by the various ebXML project teams and determine how they will work in the automotive industry. Our goal is to become ebXML-compliant in every area possible.
2. Horizontal Efforts
AIAG has participated in ebXML Proof of Concept demonstrations, with many software vendors and other industry groups, such as the Open Travel Alliance and the Global Commerce Initiative. Our part of the POC included some common Supply Chain exchanges, and the payment process.
One interesting horizontal initiative is the work being conducted to find similarities in requirements for Product Specification. In this area we are working with several industries: Electronic Manufacturing, steel, and others. It did not surprise us that the industries have remarkably similar data requirements, and that the format used (X12 or EDIFACT or XML) was not relevant.
A later similar initiative is in the area of Quality reporting. In this case, the effort will take the entire ebXML business process thru core components to XML schema and actual implementations. Definitely proving the ebXML concept.
AIAG will continue its work in the coming months, and probably years. We will continue to work with our European colleagues from Odette, and JAMA/JAPIA, and at all of the collaborative EWG/X12 meetings.
3. Late-breaking News
Since we prepared this presentation, numerous meetings have been held. I'll give you a quick update.
Quality Effort:
EWG/X12: In this case, meetings are held concurrent with both the previously-scheduled EWG meetings, and the X12 meetings. The latest meeting was the EWG meeting held in the United States, and the next will be the X12 meeting in June. The presentation provides an update of the March EWG meeting.
ebXML, Phase One, held its final meeting in Vienna just two weeks ago. I hope that many of you were in attendance. The presentation will also provide a brief update from that meeting.
Thank you very much for your interest and attention.
Slides from presentation http://www.gca.org/papers/xmleurope2001/papers/slides/s18-2cpres.pdf.