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Brendan C. Flynn, Manager, Textile Data Systems, Fiber Processing Research, Cotton Incorporated
I'm going to give you an overview of Cotton Incorporated's CI~EDISM Service and QRNet Program. Let's start off with an overview of the CI~EDISM Service.
The CI~EDISM Service is an electronic dial-up mailbox service, also known as a Value Added Network, that allows trading partners, such as merchants and mills, to exchange cotton data in ANSI X12 Electronic Data Interchange file formats.
EDI files are standardized structured file formats that allow companies to exchange information in a mutually understood format. EDI, conforming to ANSI national standards, makes it possible for companies to exchange data without worrying about which format is necessary for each different company.
The EDI file formats that are currently supported by the CI~EDISM Service are the 856 and 863. The 856 is a Shipping Notice that allows you to exchange weights, bale numbers and other important shipping information. The 863 is for exchanging Test Results of your cotton HVI properties such as micronaire, strength and length are among the many properties that may be exchanged.
There are many value added features that demonstrate why you should use the CI~EDISM Service to exchange your cotton data. I'll briefly go over these features.
The CI~EDISM Service can handle data transfer rates up to 33 thousand 600 bits per second, which is much faster than most of the other existing services. Once an EDI file is uploaded to the CI~EDISM Service, it is instantly delivered to the receiver's mailbox ready to be downloaded. There is no lag time between the completion of an upload and when it is ready to be downloaded by the receiver.
The cost is considerably lower than other Value Added Networks. In fact, the cost is about 50% less than GE and with the speed of our modems, long distance phone bills would be reduced with less time spent on-line.
The CI~EDISM Service includes full written documentation, installation and dedicated technical support. Phone, email and fax are among the most common ways to contact our friendly and knowledgeable technical support staff. If for any reason you need to download a file a second time, the last 12 EDI files transmitted are immediately available through the menu options to be downloaded again and all EDI files transmitted are archived on tape. All accounts are password protected and users are only able to access data that is addressed to them. Also data can be restored from tape. There are many reports that allow you to monitor the status of data that has been exchanged for the current or previous week.
Here is a list of the available reports (Figure 2). The sender and receiver status reports are updated three times a day, Monday through Friday. The Mill and Merchant user reports are lists of all the current members of the CI~EDISM Service. The Sender reports inform you on data that has been uploaded and whether the receiver downloaded it or if there was an error mailing the data because of an invalid address. The Receiver reports inform what data you have downloaded and what data is waiting in your mailbox to be downloaded.
A special report that is offered is the Electronic Summary Report. This report is a downloadable ASCII file that contains status records for all the EDI files uploaded by you and downloaded by the receiver. It is updated immediately after you have uploaded a document and immediately after the receiver has downloaded the document. After the report has been downloaded, these records can be easily read into existing databases by a simple parsing program written by your MIS department, which allows you to manage the status of your data
Here are a couple sample records (Figure 3). The first record is an example of what you would get for an upload. The first character being an S is what signifies this record to be a sender record. The second record is an example of what you would get when the receiver downloaded that data. The first character being an R is what signifies this record to be a received record. The sender and receiver EDI addresses, MARK, document type, ISA number, bytes per ISA segment and status are common fields for each record type. The date and time are relative to the record type. For the sender record they are the date and time the data was sent and for the received record they are the date and time the data was downloaded
There are many users of the CI~EDISM Service and here is a list of them (Figure 4). Currently there are 89 users
Here are a few advantages of the CI~EDISM Service versus Email (Figure 5). In the CI~EDISM Service all data mailed to you is placed in one file until it is downloaded. This means that you can import all data downloaded in one step. On the Internet, you will receive multiple separate emails. Each email has to be read in separately, which is time consuming and tedious. The security of the CI~EDISM Service is much more safe. Anyone on the Internet can use available software to intercept your emailed data. This can not happen on the CI~EDISM Service since it is a dial-in service. The transfer of data is immediate once it is uploaded to the CI~EDISM Service. On the Internet, email can bounce around the world for any amount of time and may not even make it to the desired destination. The Internet has no technical customer support department to help you with problems exchanging data. As I mentioned earlier, the CI~EDISM Service has a dedicated technical support department eager to help with any difficulties.
Overview of the QRNet Program
QRNet is a file format translator program designed to support ANSI X12 standards. Here are a few features of QRNet (Figure 6).
QRNet has the ability to translate between three different file formats.
The three formats are:
- QRNet format ASCII files
- ANSI X12 EDI files
- internal EFS® System MILLNet file structures.
The EDI file formats that are currently supported are the 856 Shipping Notice and 863 Test Results.
QRNet's Transaction editor and Bale editor allow data modification or manual data entry. You can review or edit the data before translating to one of the supported file formats.
This is the transaction editor (Figure 7). You can see the kinds of information available in this screen, such as the trading partner, mark, document type and version. There are a couple of document specific windows dealing with shipping information that are not displayed in this figure.
This is the bale editor (Figure 8). You can see the kinds of information available in this screen, such as the gin id, bale number, weights and the HVI properties.
QRNet's interface to PROCOMM PLUS® gives you the ability to communicate with Value Added Networks, such as Cotton Incorporated's CI~EDISM Service, to send and receive cotton data. Also QRNet's interface to PROCOMM PLUS® allows automated overnight transmissions or manual transmissions.
QRNet has the same dedicated customer support service as the CI~EDISM Service. QRNet's various reports allow you to keep track of data, trading partners, etc.
Here is a list of the available reports (Figure 9).
From these reports you will be able to see relative information on all transactions, trading partners and bales, such as HVI properties, weights and detailed trading partner information.
Here's a list of what's to come for QRNet (Figure 10).
As a member of the ATMI Quick Response Maintenance Subcommittee, I have worked hard to ensure that the new 4010 FASLINC transaction sets, which are a completely compatible subset of X12 standards, meet the needs of the cotton industry.
One of the major assets of the new 4010 Transaction Sets is the dates. The date segments have been modified to have 4 digit years, which will handle the year 2000 and bring your data exchanges into the new millenium.
QRNet will soon be able to support the 4010 transaction sets for 856 and 863 document types. A new QRNet for Windows is in the planning stages. While we do not have any details at this time, we will be able to provide updates as work progresses.
That concludes my presentation. Feel free to stop by the demo room to get a more detailed view of QRNet and the CI~EDISM Service.
Thank you and enjoy the rest of the Conference. |
