The Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, Inc.

EDI Project

Electronic Data Interchange is an effective tool for programming computers to communicate with each other in a fully automated manner. It is being widely used within major industries for placing orders, transmitting invoices, reporting healthcare claims and reporting on electronic payments (see What is EDI?).

The OPEI established a program in 1996 to adapt national EDI standards to use within the Outdoor Power Equipment industry. The focus was to automate the business transactions between dealers, distributors, and manufacturers. The apparent efficiency gains were very attractive (see Dealer Benefits) for all parties, and the OPEI was dedicated to leading the industry in adopting this new technology.

Implementation of the EDI standards however, turned out to be a much more difficult task than originally expected. In spite of the best efforts on the part of the industry, EDI vendors' proprietary offerings delivered instant response capability that was virtually impossible with EDI. In addition, integration with business systems was difficult with non-standard interfaces to the vendors.

With the maturing of the Internet, the industry found that Internet technology could improve the EDI environment dramatically, offering instant response, and the ability to standardize the entire communication channel. The committee's published implementation recommendations are much easier to achieve in this new environment (see Implementation Recommendations). As a result, the committee is now adapting its EDI standards to Web Services technology.

To review or download the EDI standard
Implementation Guidelines click here.