The principal aim of the project was to set up, in a relevant industrial T/C district (Biella, the European
leading industrial district for the upper class worsted wool), a trial of inter-companies business
communication, via WEB, relying
on a set of middleware tools based on both the new XML family languages and the past experience of EDI in the
European Textile Clothing industry (Electronic Document Exchange).
The long term objective was to
contribute to the adoption, at European level of a more responsive approach
along the T/C supply chain, with a specific attention to the SMEs, using
technologies and methodologies already existing but not still well adapted to
the T/C users' needs.
The project consisted of two main
objectives in a business-to-business perspective:
-
to test an architecture of
middleware tools (adaptation and integration of commercially available
middleware based on Java) to obtain solutions to simplify the management of a
set of documents that can be applied to different scenarios and business
processes with a common core that is:
- WEB based,
- economic,
- simple,
- strong,
- flexible,
- scalable.
- legacy systems integrable
-
to adapt to the standard XML technologies and to test, on field, a commonly accepted set of
documents (called MODA-ML, derived from the EDIFACT/EDITEX experience) for the
business-to-business activities in the T/C sector, with a specific focus of the
interaction fabric supplier-garment supplier of the supply chain.
T/C companies
with a very different level of technological know–how are able to deploy
these tools and documents with a minimal effort and through the already
available skills.
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