EDI Processing and Integration - Case Study

Innov@te

Innovate Logistics use a combination of industry leading, off the shelf systems with bespoke products and a strong in-house development team to provide their customers with a flexible and robust service.

The 'Autostore' system is employed in their dedicated confectionery stores at Birmingham (Aston) and Scunthorpe, giving a high degree of integration to customers' ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. These applications are running on mirrored Tru64 Unix platforms for speed and resilience.

Vixsoft’s 'Pinpoint' system, augmented by the development work of their in-house team, runs the entire frozen and chilled operations on redundant SCO Unix servers based at their Scunthorpe Head Office. This combination gives them great flexibility and enables rapid development in response to customer requirement.

This has led to a high level of integration, with several customers utilising EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) messaging, and this is where our study begins.

Innovate were mid project to upgrade their systems to Manhattan Associates' Integrated Logistics Solutions, Motive Technology were called in to develop a new order fulfilment web interface for some of it's customers and more importantly a new EDI to xml messaging-processor.

Figure 1 above shows the basic schematic of how the system integrates with existing scheduling and logistics planning systems. With literally thousands of orders, SKUs, pallets being processed daily the EDI to XML processing system is the pivot of the whole operations.

The system was developed in c#.net and uses a very clever EDI to XML map editor to allow Innovate to have total control and flexibility over all of the inbound and outbound messages.

Various messaging formats such as Infolink, Tradacomms, ANSI 302, etc are all supported but even as new message formats are required the system has the capability to be very quickly configured to process it.

For users who do not have EDI capabilities then Motive Technology have developed a new web portal, using AJAX technologies to meet their needs. Running on SQL server with real-time processing via the EDI to XML processor, it provides a global access point for order fulfilment.

With global customers such as ASDA and Sainsbury's the new integrated system will allow more efficient and dynamic responses to their needs and help to keep Innovate at the forefront of its business.

The use of systems integration techniques is one of the key strengths of Motive Technology, if you have a requirement to integrate your systems to improve your work flow and productivity please contact us.

Read More About What We Can Offer:

Electronic Data Interchange - the explanation
Value Added Decisions - extracting essential business information
Cost/Benefit Analysis - what is the reality for you
Your Business Needs - the parameters for your software
System Integration - what we can do for you