20 SCS:DATA SYNCHRONISATION NOVEMBER 2008 SUPPLY CHAIN STANDARD
www.supplychainstandard.com
For the
greater
good
Data synchronisation is a tough nut to crack, but get it right
and the rewards are great. A grand project is underway to
create a Global Data Synchronisation Network, its success
depends upon global co-operation between manufacturers
and retailers. Will they pull it off? NICK ALLEN
Creating value in the supply chain has a close
relationship with cutting out waste – and one of
the best ways of removing waste from the supply
chain is to automate repetitive processes that add little
value. Electronic commerce may have oiled the links
between customers and suppliers, but consistent,
complete and up-to-date product information is essential
if errors are to be eliminated, or at least, greatly reduced.
The problem is, attaining accurate product
information is hellishly difficult, with pools of
inconsistent data residing in disparate systems scattered
throughout a manufacturing enterprise or across distant
ERP platforms in supplier organisations. Making a small
change to a product often requires considerable manual
intervention to update product data across all these
locations – the result being inconsistency and inaccuracy.
Inevitably, problems manifest themselves across the
supply chain in the form of shipment and invoicing
errors that can be expensive to sort out.
If a manufacturer requires a high degree of agility to
maintain a competitive stance – as is often stated in
learned supply chain management white papers – then
products need to be introduced and updated quickly and
efficiently, with product data transmitted to customers in
a consistent format.
What’s required is a central pool of product data across
a sector. And that’s exactly what a growing number of
consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers and a
few leading retailers are actively engaged in creating. The
initiative, orchestrated by GS1, the European body
responsible for bar coding and radio frequency
identification (RFID), has been building up a worldwide
system for swapping product data called the Global Data
Synchronisation Network (GDSN). The network consists
of 26 local data pools across 50 countries.
Obsolete
According to analysts, Gartner: “Mismatched and
obsolete item data costs companies millions of dollars
every year in problems like inaccurate invoices and
shipments, and the growing adoption of standards like
global data synchronisation is making it imperative for
companies to reconcile these disparities to do business
with the Wal-Marts and Krogers of the world.”
Robert Besford, business manager for Global Data
Synchronisation at GS1, gives the historical basis for the
Global Data Synchronisation initiative: “GDS goes back a
number of years to when ECR [Efficient Consumer
Response – a forum for leading CPG manufacturers and
retailers] globally decided that there needed to be a
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