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FY 2009 Policy for Business Activities

The use of IT in Japan’s economic community has contributed to improved efficiency at production sites of companies and within corporate groups, in key circulation systems, and in in-house work processing. With the spread of broadband Internet over the recent years, EDI has helped streamline business activities by speeding up transactions, reducing administrative costs, and reducing inventory within corporate groups and in industry.

However, the acceleration of efforts to optimize production and procurement on a worldwide basis with corporate globalization has led to the collapse of conventional improvable trade models, as well as to the mesh networking of supply chains and disintegration of industrial groups, making it increasingly difficult to use the current group-type and industry-contained type information systems. With the progress of digitalization and modularization, set manufacturers in emerging nations are rapidly rising as players of global markets, making it increasingly important for Japanese small and medium-sized companies to sell high quality, highly reliable, and environment-friendly parts, which are their strengths, to overseas in order to enhance Japan’s global competitiveness.

On the other hand, with the impending aging population with declining birthrate faced in the near future, the Japanese economic community is pressed for productivity reforms of all industries. The economic sector also faces urgent tasks related to safety, security, and the environment such as reinforcement of chemical substance control, demands for product safety control, and recycling.

IT infrastructures sought in such economic and social trends must realize overall optimization while avoiding redundant investments, and mechanisms for sharing information outside business partners without being restrained by business type and corporate scale while securing international and business interface interoperability.

In our FY2009 business activities, JEDIC aims to partner with the Next Generation Electronic Commerce Promotion Council of Japan (ECOM) to reexamine conventional industry-standard EDI from the perspectives of interoperability between industries, penetration to small and medium-sized enterprises and international interoperability, and propose and promote an infrastructure for an information-oriented economic society which can deal flexibly with the changes in the global economic community.

1. Committee Activities

In order to implement the intentions of the foundation and the terms of reference and activity policies of JEDIC, a Steering Committee has been established based on Article 7 of Terms and Reference, and an EDI Promotion Committee and EDI Awareness Committee have been established based on Article 9.The following activities are carried out mainly around the committees and sectional committees.

1.1 Steering Committee

A Steering Committee has been established to plan and coordinate the items required for the management of the Council and the implementation of operations. The committee consists of the representatives of member organizations and chairpersons of other sectional committees.

It is important for the Steering Committee to review common industry-wide EDI themes and smoothly promote EDI business interfaces and internationalization through information exchange between industries. In addition, it needs to plan and coordinate business activities that contribute to the dissemination of EDI in various industries. To do so, the Steering Committee shall conduct sessions for the candid exchange of opinions by all member industries to bring to light commonly recognized issues and facilitate agreement for their resolution.

The following activities will be focused on in FY2009.

  1. Discuss and establish business plan (proposal) for FY2009.
  2. Propose and discuss general meeting proposals.
  3. Coordinate and support the activities of sectional committees carried out as part of the FY 2009 business plan
  4. Coordinate and support activities of member industrial organizations.
  5. Plan the future direction of JEDIC.

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2. EDI Promotion Committee Activities

As a result of the reviews by the Business Infrastructure Study Group promoted by the Ministry of Economic, Trade and Industry, the business guidelines based on the Subcontracting Law (“Act against Delay in Payment of Subcontract Proceeds, Etc. to Subcontractors”) in the area of materials processing were revised in December last year, and the new guidelines now prescribe that forcing business partners to implement EDI not conforming to industry standards may be pertinent to the act of forcing business partners to use the EDI method specified or forcing their services, and thus violate the Subcontracting Law.

The guidelines however do not provide a clear definition of “Industry-Standard EDI”, and JEDIC is expected to provide this definition. The EDI Promotion Committee shall therefore work with the new Business Infrastructure Group set up in ECOM, and undertake the following together with the task of establishing a definition of “industry-standard EDI”.

  • Define industry-standard EDI (business protocols, information protocols, communication protocols, company codes, common dictionaries, etc.)
  • Build system for certifying industry-standard EDIs and ensuring these are observed.
  • Establish system for the maintenance and management of common infrastructures of industry-standard EDI.
  • Promote implementation of systems conforming to industry-standard EDI in small and medium-sized enterprises, etc.
  • Expand systems conforming to industry-standard EDI overseas (international standardization and cooperation with overseas organization)

These activities shall be carried out jointly with the Business Infrastructure Group of ECOM which is participated by many specialists such as EDI user companies and IT vendors. Specifically, activities will center around; a) selection and dispatch of members cooperating in activities, b) management of progress of activities, c) discussion and approval of proposals under review.

3. EDI Awareness Committee Activities

Surveys on actual use of EDI will be conducted to encourage business partnerships and information sharing based on EDI, and based on the results of these surveys and the results of reviews by the EDI Promotion Committee, corporate partnerships and information sharing in Japan including small and medium-sized enterprises will be promoted, training seminars held, newsletters issued, information distributed on the Internet, and information sharing infrastructures such as EDI data sharing dictionaries and company codes, etc. approved by the EDI Promotion Committee will be provided. To promote information sharing in global business, interchanges and information exchanges with EDI international standardization organizations will be carried out and the latest information on international standardization trends will be distributed to member organizations.

3.1 Survey on Actual Uses of EDI

Surveys on the actual uses of EDI are conducted with the cooperation of members of JEDIC. The results will be summarized in the “Report on Actual Uses of EDI” and disclosed on the JEDIC website and JEDIC Newsletter, etc., to contribute to reviews of the ideals of business-to-business information sharing techniques in new infrastructures for information-oriented economic communities.

3.2 EDI Dissemination Activities

In order to promote the dissemination of EDI in industry including small and medium-sized enterprises, seminar-type dissemination workshops will be held and EDI-related information will be provided through PR magazines and on the Internet.

  1. EDI dissemination workshops
    Dissemination workshops will be held on the latest technological trends of EDI, governmental EDI measures, advanced cases of EDI introduction, etc.
  2. Publication of PR magazine “JEDIC Newsletter”
    The JEDIC Newsletter will be issued providing the following information and will be extensively disclosed on the JEDIC website to the public to spread EDI.
    • Case Studies of EDI introduction
    • Trends on corporate partnerships and information sharing in the industry
    • Internationl EDI standardization trends,etc.
  3. Providing information through the Internet
    The Committee will run the JEDIC website introducing the Council, its activities, members, etc. Some of the information will be in English to provide information to overseas.

3.3 Provison of Information Sharing Infrastructure

The following information will be provided on the JEDIC website as information sharing infrastructure.

  • EDI data dictionary
  • General search system of company codes
  • Various EDI standardization technology specifications (Core Component Technical Specification, etc. )
  • Various guidelines (Guidelines on EDI solutions recommended for small and medium-sized enterprises, etc.)

3.4 Interchanges with International Standardization Organizations

By participating in EDI related international conferences such as the UN CEFACT, etc., interchanges (information exchange) with organizations promoting EDI and related industrial organizations in various countries will be promoted, latest technological trends will be surveyed, and information will be provided to Council members. In addition, the Council will also work with the UN CEFACT to support the promotion of ISO standardization of next generation EDI together with the screening committee of ISO TC154 in Japan which develops and maintains international EDI standardization criteria.

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4. Operating Expense and Administrative Work

Expense for operating the Council will be allocated from the business expenses of the Japan Information Processing Development Cooperation.

Routine administrative work of the Council will be continued by the Japan Information Processing Development Cooperation.