Practical SCM system research of the steel products EC. : A realization of the efficient inter-enterprise business basis by the open EDI

In the iron & steel industry, enormous trade information is tranmitted by the EDI at present. It concerns the steel requirement forecasting work at the specific inter-enterprise. However, it has not come to widely installing to all enterprises for hugeness of the infrastructure construction cost, etc. Therefore, the human carries out the information collection from the enterprise which has not installed the system by telephones, etc.. And, efficiency improvement of the business have relatively been retarded in those enterprises. This time, the demonstration of the open EDI which utilized Internet for the transmission of the all information which are mutually necessary throughout supply chain enterprises from iron & steel manufacturer to Electrical appliance manufacturer is promoted. The outline of the research is reported in the following. The target business field is trade business which contracted of the steel sheet material for Electrical appliance manufacturer annually. At first, iron & steel manufacturers, trading companies, steel product processing companies, Electrical appliance manufacturers mutually show delivery information and products quality information on Internet. Next, enterprise which is allowed to access to the open database freely searches delivery information and products quality information. This system becomes the inter-enterprise business basis. The development theme is segmented in following themes. 1). The model of the order entry business from iron & steel industry to electrical industry by computer data transmission will be designed. 2). The protocol for connecting the iron & steel industry with the electrical industry will be developed. 3). The building technology of decentralized open database on Internet will be developed. 4). The information retrieval agent system across many enterprises will be developed. At the end of last August, the system development finished. At present, the experiment using real data is carried out.