UCCnet: The Basics

Retailers and their key suppliers have begun driving toward collaborative networks that will reduce their costs by reducing inventories, and improve revenue by preventing stock-outs. These new trading relationships often expand and extend software touch-points beyond traditional supply chain technology, such as EDI.

A key enabler for these relationships is agreement between trading partners on both the technology used to transmit the information and, more importantly, the business data itself. One area that is receiving significant attention in the market is business data synchronization for items.[1]

[1] Mercator UCCnet documentation.

For example, suppliers incorrectly fill a large number of purchase orders because the retailer did not use the correct material number. As a result, the wrong material is sent, increasing inventories and damaging revenue. A.T. Kearny conducted a study that found as much as:

  • 30 percent of the data in retail catalogs contains errors that cost from $60 to $80 each

  • 60 percent of all invoices generated errors, with each invoice error costing from $40 to $400

  • 43 percent of all invoices resulted in deductions

As a subsidiary of the Uniform Code Council (UCC), UCCnet has developed a neutral industry source where retailers can locate product and partner information regardless of which manufacturer published it. Known as the GLOBALregistry, this hub-based architecture provides item synchronization services among all participants of the supply network. This capability is delivered by communicating all information through industry standards for transport, UCC-defined formats, and processes.

The adoption of large players on the retail side, such as Wal-Mart, Lowe's, Food Lion, SuperValu, and Ace Hardware, has driven increased adoption rates on the supplier side thus far. For example, when Wal-Mart announced that its Tier 1 suppliers must now subscribe to the UCCnet, the result was a significant increase in participation due to the many suppliers who have relationships with Wal-Mart. Bottom line is that retail participation drives the explosive growth rate of the GLOBALregistry because they drag their suppliers into the UCCnet.

There are three major areas of service that make up UCCnet:

  • A standard database for products and locations.

  • Access to updated trading information.

  • The use of standards for both storing and retrieving this information.

The use of UCCnet's GLOBALregistry provides a single database for product and trading partner information and is endorsed by EAN International and many of the world's leading industry organizations. Using this database, companies can publish and transmit their product information, providing trading partners with access. Moreover, the use of EAN.UCC standards provides a set of technical standards to ensure integrity of the data throughout the supply chain.

So, how does a trading partner become part of UCCnet? Just subscribe. A full-service subscription provides access to:

  • GLOBALregistry for storage of data relating to the products you are trading, including the attributes for each item. This is the common registry for use when exchanging information with trading partners.

  • Item Synchronization for the publication of current industry-compliant data to the GLOBALregistry, thus making this information available to the trading partners.

  • SYNCpoint, which is a Web browser interface providing the trading partner with the ability to synchronize EAN.UCC item information with other suppliers. This also includes access to business applications and services.

  • M2M, which provides the message transport mechanism for UCCnet.

UCCnet Components

There are four main components supporting this standard:

  1. Protocol support. UCCnet currently supports two techniques to connect to their hub. The first of these is called the UCCnet Technical Application Programming Interface (UTAPI). This technique is being deprecated, so should not be considered when developing strategy.

  2. Partner and message management. This includes the ability to set up links to the GLOBALregistry, ensure that messages sent/received adhere to the standard, provide a record of sent/received messages for nonrepudiation and auditing, and the ability to drill down into message payloads as a business user interface. Also required is the ability to route messages to appropriate post offices based on the content of the message.

    The UCCnet Technical User's Guide contains an example of the payload used by UCCnet items. As you can see from the User's Guide, it is a complex XML-based payload. We describe this in additional detail below.

  3. Process management support. Currently UCCnet is a stateless B2B standard. However, with the acquisition of RosettaNet, and emerging business needs, we should expect that a public process will be defined for UCCnet transactions. The UCC (UCCnet's parent organization) has proposed an ebXML-based version of stateful UCCnet transactions as a first step toward adding this functionality. As a result, the ability to lay a process layer on top of the transaction flow for public processes will be needed.

  4. Application integration capabilities. In order for organizations to gain business benefit from connecting to UCCnet's hub, they must be able to harmonize the various applications in their portfolio. This requires core application integration capabilities.

UCCnet Message Set

UCCnet uses a DTD message structure to define the valid building blocks of an XML document (how they exchange information). The UCCnet message structure uses several of the features leveraged by the EAN.UCC Message Architecture, including the separation of messages into three layers:

  1. Transport

  2. Command

  3. Data/Document

The transport layer deals with the technology required to get the message from point A to point B. A message includes all necessary information such as recipient, sender, associations, identifier, and so on. This dynamic information is always changing.

In terms of UCCnet this layer is customized for the applications, meaning it's proprietary to UCCnet. There are future plans to move to ebXML and Web services standards, including SOAP.

The command layer defines the function and operation, and how each should be performed when a particular message is received. This is also dynamic and is associated with a grouping of messages or a single message.

And finally, the document/data layer describes what information the command acts upon. This typically appears as an identifier to the specific document (e.g., the Global Trade Item Number, or GTIN, or the Global Location Number, or GLN). This information is persistent from transaction to transaction.

Global identifiers identify persistent data objects in the system. This is required because we have data from so many trading partners at the same time. This allows commands to use references to these documents in lieu of the entire structure.

UCCnet leverages these identifiers, which are kept in a central location, unique to the UCC. However, they do not exist for other documents, including price brackets, prices, and so on. The end result is a set of identifiers that is globally accessible, but still easy to create and track.

For example, we may use a concatenation of properties to create a unique identifier. We can take the owner's GLN, an owner-generated identifier, and a document type, and create this structure.[2] Thus, as long as the owner makes sure the entity ID (created by the owner) is unique, the three concatenated elements, taken as a whole, would provide a unique identifier for the document for which it was created. For example:

[2] UCCnet. Technical Users Guide; page 9.

 Type: PriceBracket GLN: 9090909090909 Identifier: X90909 

Thus, the above is considered unique as long as the trading partner does not create another PriceBracket with the same identifier. Thus we can consider this globally unique. In the world of UCCnet, this concept is known as typed EntityIdentification.

The notion of document reuse in the world of UCCnet is when a particular business entity is able to reuse a variety of different business processes, including the ability to reuse an item and its GTIN. In this scenario, you may reference a GTIN in the context of pricing information or other documents, meaning it's reused within other business processes. You may also apply this concept to other types of entities, such as EDI or XML.

UCCnet: A Contender?

UCCnet is one of those standards that's powerful enough to be useful, but not too complex to use. It's a vertical standard, and only applicable in a single industry product-intensive companies and has a strong foothold with retailers.

As we have seen above, UCCnet provides two basic services: data synchronization and a global registry of product information required to support a basic trading community. This standard provides a unique way to identify products, which has been haphazard in the world of retail.

Users of UCCnet are a "Who's Who" in retail, including Wal-Mart, Wegmans Food Markets, and Ralston Purina. Moreover, trading exchanges such as Transora leverage UCCnet to support catalog services, as in GlobalNetXchange.

In the future we will likely see UCCnet join forces with other, more horizontal B2B standards, such as BPEL, ebXML, and RosettaNet. Indeed, we are seeing convergence today with this and other supply chain standards. For a while, however, these standards are going to be more vertically focused.

Clearly, the number of retailers and suppliers leveraging UCCnet is increasing quickly as they realize what UCCnet is and what it is not. It's correct to consider UCCnet a public utility, thus neutral. Considering all this, it has a bright future.



Next Generation Application Integration(c) From Simple Information to Web Services
Next Generation Application Integration: From Simple Information to Web Services
ISBN: 0201844567
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 220

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