One of the great advantages of using EDI is communicating information about your business transactions automatically. Create a purchase order for products; receive the products; get an invoice for the products. It's a simple sequence that happens millions of times every day between large and small trading partners spread all across the globe. But knowing exactly what is included in your order has become increasingly important for a number of reasons.

In a simple transaction where one purchase order requests products to be shipped to a single location, and that purchase order is shipped complete, there is relatively little additional information needed other than knowing when the order shipped and when it is expected to arrive. That's not to say there can't be problems with even the simplest shipment. But as order and distribution schemes grow in complexity, the margin for delivery delays from manufacturers erodes.

An emerging trend is the increased importance of the ASN (advance ship notification), or 856 document. While the document is certainly not new, its use and its complexity has grown because of several significant factors, including:

• +Time-critical shipments
• +Direct shipping to the point of sale
• +Repacking/Transshipping
• +Multiple destinations

Changing the Delivery
A "standard" ASN is like any "standard" EDI document in that each one has its own specific content and format based on the trading relationship it supports. Nonetheless, the ASN has literally been exploded in order to accommodate these more complex transactions.

With simple shipments from a manufacturer to a central warehouse, an ASN could be as simple as a turn-around document, copied directly from the contents of the purchase order that originally initiated the shipment. However, short shipments, multiple destinations, and differential packaging requirements mean that ASN's supporting their shipments are anything but standard.

The wholesale food industry is one that appears to be finding increasing importance and benefit from the use of complex ASNs. Corey Felten, EDI Coordinator with Dot Foods, Inc, headquartered in Mt. Sterling, Illinois says, "It makes a lot of sense that the ASN helps our processes, and we are going at implementing them hard. We require both the 855 and the 856 from our trading partners."

Dot Foods has been using the 856 for many years, but has moved its importance up the processing ladder. As Felten says, "We used to update our ordering system by hand, but the process is now automated. We start by using the 855 / purchase order acknowledgement to confirm prices, location, and quantity." The automated updates help Dot's buyers get ahead of the curve by letting them know if they need to take proactive measures to supplement a short shipment.

The 856 provides the detailed shipping information Dot needs prior to receiving. "We want our suppliers to send the ASN as soon as the truck leaves the dock," says Felten. "It updates our system and gives our buyers a final alert if there are any problems."

In the food industry, one complexity is the issue of variable weight. "The combined weight of each shipment is collected so that we can update the final invoice and stay ahead of the game."

Felten sees the use of the ASN as an advantage in staying competitive and improving the company's performance, particularly with respect to preventing out of stock conditions. As Felten puts it, "We still struggle to get suppliers to send their ASNs in on time." She explains, "Our buyers are very happy to be able to react quickly to shortages and initiate alternate buys, but they need to know about the shipment right away in order to react in time for their actions to make a difference."

Why Not?
While there is cost involved in any implementation, for hubs like Dot Foods, the initial expense of setting up the 856 document has been made long ago. "We don't experience any cost to implement an ASN with a new vendor," says Felten. However, vendors looking to comply with their customers' mandate to send ASNs may have several hurdles to overcome, depending on the kind of orders they are shipping.

Most of the complexity in the ASN originates with the vendor, even if they are filling only a single purchase order. As Dot's Felten points out, one of the most direct examples of problems with ASNs is the timely creation and transmission by the vendor to the customer. Even though the vendor's EDI transaction can be automated, collecting the information about the final shipment and converting that information into data, then into an EDI transaction may still be a manual task.

The last set of steps in the process may require additional time-critical manual steps or the addition of equipment and systems able to capture information and relay it to the automated applications that will ultimately create the ASN to be sent to the customer. Those costs may be less than trivial but could be what separates a vendor from a customer in the long term.