Improving UccNet-compliant B2B Supply-chain Applications Using a Context Interchange Framework
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Author(s)
Tu, Steven
Madnick, Stuart
Wu, Luis
Date Issued
December 10, 2004
Series/Report no.
MIT Sloan School of Management Working Paper;4478-04
Abstract
UccNet is a globally centralized B2B electronic data platform for storing trading product item information and
hosted by the non-profit international standardization institute EAN-UCC. It is an emerging B2B data
communication standard for the retail industry with significant potential impact. Many US retailers are requesting
their international suppliers for compulsory subscription by the year-end of either 2004 or 2005 and many major IT
software providers and consulting firms specialized in supply chain management are preparing packaged
services/solutions for this imminent demand.
In light of the increasing importance of UccNet on both the technology and application sides, this paper attempts to
advance the following argument: Though UccNet establishes an architectural framework to resolve the
many-to-many connectivity issue and data synchronization issue through a centralized product database and a
uniform numbering system (i.e., Global Trade Item Numbering), there are context discrepancy issues remaining to
be addressed. We show with a real case study that context discrepancy is inherent in the international trading
applications where UccNet is intended to be used. Naturally, international trading partners tend to define and
describe product item information differently. That difference, either due to the culture or the geographical location,
is not considered in the original design of UccNet. As an example, the attribute "width" contained in the database
schema of UccNet would be filled by a China-based supplier in 'meter' and yet be interpreted as 'feet' by the US
retail buyer.
We show how the Context Interchange Framework, operating under the rationale of local autonomy and speaking
to the resolution of context mediation issue, can be nicely incorporated into the existing UccNet framework to
constitute theoretically a more complete technical solution and practically a more useful B2B supply chain business
solution.
Subjects
B2B
Retail Supply-Chain
UccNet
Data Connectivity and Synchronization
Context Interchange
Data Semantics
Persistent DSpace Link
