1. 30 Years of UN/EDIFACT
5th October 2017

2. In the beginning -------
30 Years of UN/EDIFACT
In the beginning
Early 80s - EDI messages were being developed by automotive companies in several European countries under the auspices of their national automotive associations (e.g. VDA in Germany, SMMT in UK)
Odette was formed as an international EDI project organisation by automotive associations from 8 countries
- Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, UK
 Organisation for Data Exchange by TeleTransmission in Europe
- Organisation pour Donnees Echangee par Tele Transmission en Europe
1993 – Czech Republic joins the Odette project
2000 – Odette becomes a registered ‘not for profit’ company
Italy and Benelux countries subsequently dropped out but Turkey joined as an Associate Member and Italy came back in more recently (also as an Associate Member).

3. 30 Years of UN/EDIFACT The move to EDIFACT
Odette originally developed messages based on Tradacoms standards using UN/GTDI syntax
1987 (30 years ago!) - Decided to migrate the Odette Tradacoms style messages to the new EDIFACT Syntax (ISO 9735)
1990 – Decided to make a full migration to EDIFACT Messages - UNSMs
Development of the new message guidelines took some time but some companies in the European Automotive Industry have now been using Odette EDIFACT messages since mid-1990s
Over the past 20 years, almost all European automotive companies have moved from using the original Odette messages (and other standards such as VDA) to using Odette EDIFACT.

4. Odette EDIFACT Messages
30 Years of UN/EDIFACT
Odette EDIFACT Messages
Almost 40 Odette EDIFACT Message Guidelines have now been published
AVIEXP, AVIGRU, AVIREX, BASDAT, CALDEL, CONSUM, CONTRL, CREDIT, DEBNOT, DELINS, DESADV, ENQIRY, EXHAND, FORDIS, IFTMAN, IFTMBC, IFTMBF, IFTMIN, IFTSTA, INVOIC, INVTLR, KANBAN, OFFERR, ORDCHG, ORDELI, ORDERR, OSTENQ, PRILST, REMADV, REPDEL, REPINV, REPORD, STATAC, STOACT, SYNCRO, SYNPAC, TRINAD
These Odette Message Guidelines are based on around 20 EDIFACT UNSMs
The most widely used of these are probably DELFOR, DELJIT, DESADV and INVOIC but we believe that messages based on every one of the 20 or so EDIFACT UNSMs are in current use somewhere in the European Automotive Industry and beyond.

5. 30 Years of UN/EDIFACT Global reach…..
Since 2000 Odette has also worked with sister organisations in USA (AIAG) and Japan (JAMA/JAPIA) under the auspices of the Joint Automotive Industry Forum (JAIF) to develop Global Automotive Message Guidelines based on EDIFACT UNSMs.
 JAIF has published 6 Global Automotive Message Guidelines based on 6 EDIFACT UNSMs
DELFOR, DELJIT, DESADV, RECADV, INVOIC and REMADV

6. 30 Years of UN/EDIFACT The story continues…..
In 2017, Odette continues to develop new message guidelines based on EDIFACT UNSMs to support  a wider range of logistics processes such as the Management of Returnable Packaging and Tracking & Tracing of shipments in long-distance supply chains.
Although the death of EDIFACT and its replacement by other messaging technologies such as XML has been predicted for many years, in the automotive industry, at least, EDIFACT goes from strength to strength.