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Creating an Electronic Data Interchange System?
jgrumbles asks: "I've been in a PC support technician internship for the past 7 months for a polyethylene (plastic) pipe company which has doubled in size the past 4 years. I've been notified that management wants me to head a new initiative within the company. The main goal, in the beginning, is to basically restructure the slipshod EDI system they are using right now. The IT director even admits he should have had some training when implementing the system, but it was at the time of the boom so he had to do it as he went along. Are there any definitive EDI/E-Commerce information conglomerates, websites, listservs, groups, or other sources of information? My main mission will be to recreate the EDI system, which includes an AS/400 in a Windows environment, from scratch. Further down the road I'll be in charge of implementing technology in other areas such as getting RFIDs on every piece of pipe we ship in order to further automate tracking and billing. So, does anyone have suggestions on where to look for information and possible case studies?"
Boss: jgrumbles, our company is growing fast; we've doubled in size over the past 48 months. We need you to design, build and implement an EDI to replace our AS/400 system. Plan for expansion into RFID, shipping and automated tracking & billing. Would you mind using Ask Slashdot for guidance in this risky, company-wide endeavour?
Trolling is a art,
The point is- both of which can be done better WITHOUT an AS/400 in the mix. It's drop dead simple to go from SQL to whatever flat text file format you want- and XML is still a flat text file format.
Riiiight. This really cements my opinion that you DKWTFYTA. If they're using an AS/400 for their EDI now it probably means that it's also doing their ERP, invoicing, and other accounting. Doing away with their AS/400 would most likely mean even wider changes in their organization than just changing edi platforms. You can never simply "dump your as400." Were you even aware you can work with your DB2 UDB on your MIDRANGE (NOT A FUCKING MAINFRAME) iSeries with vanilla SQL?
Besides, you can create all the x12 text files you want, but if you're dealing with a lot of customers or vendors you're probably going to need to go through a VAN in which case you'll want their EDI suite anyway.
And going back to your original post, have you ever even worked on an iSeries (as400)? Long after all your blade servers have died strange and varied deaths, that iSeries will be chugging in the back room. I don't think you'll ever find a system as stable and well documented as the iSeries.
When it comes to business continuity you can't put a price tag on it. I'd MUCH rather pay a shit load of money for an iSeries that will run without complaint for decades with little intervention, than a slightly lesser shit load of money for a raft of pc blade servers.
Knowing what to search for brings up these relevant links:
EDIFACT
X12
How Radio Frequency Identification Affects EDI
Integration for Logistics: RFID, EDI, XML, and Beyond
If you are using an off-the-shelf inventory/billing system they you should probably consider letting someone else handle the integration and format-translation.
I have implemented an EDI system from scratch at my previous company. It was based on EDIFACT and email, and had extensive tracking&tracing, status feedback, error handling. The major challenge in implementing and EDI system is the integration with your EDI partners. It took 3 months from start of testing to the first real EDI message getting through, and almost a year before the workflow was right. Another challenge is that touches on legal responsibility - who said what, why, when.
I believe that ROI was good. No more manually entering 5 batches of 100 items every day. And the deadlines were improved so the final information set could be imported half an hour before work was initiated.
As far as I know the system is still chugging along 5 years after I left the company.
You're a techie, but this is no reason to start off with a solely tech discussion. As a former techie, and more recently a consultant, here's my spin:
(1) get your boss to write down the business reasons for the change. Not technical reasons, business - cost savings, productivity increases, etc.
If there aren't well defined reasons, then you can't technically come up with a solution that's much use, as they haven't defined the problem for you.
(2) Get your boss to write down the goal of the project. This is usually a single statement. Eg if you worked in an oil company the goal might be "deploy a pipeline from turkey to russia that can carry 5m L oil per day". If he won't write it down, you write it, and get him to approve it formally.
If he can't or won't, then you don't have a baseline to judge all future decisions against. I.e. whwnever you have a question or problem, ask yourself does it help or hinder this goal.
(3) Figure out what the parameters of the deployment should be: think what, when, why, how, where. E.g. it should be completed within X months, should not cost more than $Y, should be availble in Z% of offices, should not take more time to complete a transaction than the exisiting system.
These parameters help define what you should and shouldn't do, how much resource to devote etc. Basically they give you the rules of the game.
(4) Figure out who the stakeholders are - ie who is affected, and who has power within the company. This typically includes the fincial director at a high level, and end-suers at the low level. Speak to the FD - he often has final say over everything, and has his own set of expectations different to the IT director. Speak to the users - they can suggest problems that need to be fixed, and things that work and they want kept.
Knowing the stakeholders and keeping them informed and happy is the biggest challenge.
No offense, but you say you're a 7m technician intern. This makes me suspicious they putting a core business function in your hands that if fucked up could kill the company.
I suggest after doing basic research, going back to the IT director and saying something along the lines of "the total cost of switching, impacts on the business and risk to business interruption are not clear. Yes the current solution might look expensive on paper, but it might be less expensive than swapping. We need to scope this in a bit more depth, and possibly engage outside experts for a small study to understand costs, benefits and impacts." then hand him a short list of potential expert companies that can help. by this stage you'll have called these companies, and in general terms described your problem, and checked out if than can help, how and will it cost. You'll have names, phone numbers and email addresses for all of them.
I agree with the others when they say EDI isn't something to take on alone. Use the experts. If you've never project managed before on any scale, I suggest you get help with that too - internally or externally.
Best of luck. this can be a great learning experience.
Ps if your company throws a wobbly at any of the things I've suggested above, tehn that means they're not serious. Find yourself another job, they don't pay you enough to deal with bad management on top of everything.