News & Events

RosettaNet: Expanding Visibility

A closer look at RosettaNet and its supply chain proposition from forecast to cash 

by Scott Koegler, ec-bp.org

Herman Stiphout is the President of RosettaNet, and Paul Tearnen, the VP of Standards Development for GS1 US

Q: Tell me a little about RosettaNet and what the organization does.

A: Stiphout - RosettaNet is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1998 by a group of companies in the high tech sector. They represent a cross section of industries that felt that supply chain processes were being hindered by proprietary non-standard processes. They decided to put aside their competitive issues in order to develop and implement a set of standards that could help them reduce costs and increase the effectiveness of their supply chains.

Until 2004 the group was exclusively made up of high tech organizations and Solution Providers, but since then other companies have joined the efforts. The group now includes a logistics council which includes shippers and third party logistics companies. [To date, the consortium has established several regional affiliate organizations -- in the Americas , Australia , China , Europe, Japan , Korea , Malaysia , Philippines , Singapore , Thailand (appended) and Taiwan -- giving voice to various business economies seeking to adopt and influence RosettaNet's global standards.]

Membership in RosettaNet is divided into two segments. At the highest level, we have the global councils. This group is responsible for developing the standards. The second group is designated as global partners. This group is expanding, and they are the group that is primarily interested in implementing the standards that have been designed and developed by the global councils.

RosettaNet is part of GS1 US, which has its hands in data synchronization [through its 1SYNC organization], Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) [EPCglobal], bar code and e-Commerce [GS1 US], as well as RosettaNet. Each organization operates independently, but has touch points that are defined by their members' requirements.

Many of our members are large companies that find value in providing resources to multiple GS1 US efforts. So some RosettaNet members are also involved with EPCglobal, for example.

Q: How is RosettaNet different from the EDI/X12 effort?

A: Tearnen - The organizations are similar in structure, but tactically different. The X12/EDIFACT efforts tend to apply to a broader constituency, and because of that, are slower to act. There is no direct relationship between the definition of requirements and actual development.

RosettaNet is very tactical in nature. It is directed at solving problems for specific companies quickly. The typical time from inception to roll-out of a RosettaNet project is nine months. In contrast, the ANSI/EDIFACT group has not produced any new business processes in the last five years.

There is also a difference in the scope of the projects. RosettaNet addresses the supply chain from forecast to cash, and includes areas that require information as widely diverse as engineering, design, and manufacturing.

As an example, RosettaNet has done a lot in the logistics area of customs documents. It has gone beyond simple clearance documents, like those provided for in the EDI/EDIFACT arena. It includes 3PL (third party logistics) companies, small and medium exporters, and the automated exchange of logistics information. It reaches much deeper into the supply chain details than what is provided for in the EDI world.

Q: How does the process of creating standard processes and documents differ from the ANSI process?

A: Tearnen - RosettaNet implements the concept of committed validation. That means that no standard is published until at least three companies have put it into production. Specifically, that means the business definition is complete, it has been encoded to XML, the process has been implemented, documents have been exchanged, the results have been evaluated, and updates to the standard have been completed. The organization works closely with solutions providers in order to assure the incorporation of each iteration, and eventually the standard is rolled out.

Another differentiator is that we have automated the process of creating the implementation guides. An EDI implementation is a set of paper documentation that must be read, interpreted, and implemented by a specialist. That person needs to then define the attributes and locations of the data, selecting from the various possibilities provided for in the X12 specification. RosettaNet messages are described in a machine processable way rather than in text.

We have used XML as a tool not only to contain the data, but as a way to implement the enablement process. That means we can use exactly the same message for various size companies. A small company can tie a form to a constrained version of the message, and simply fill it out on screen. This is significantly different from the way EDI messages need to be translated and converted.

RosettaNet standards are created by the companies that use them, so they are specific to their particular use, rather than being designed to be used by a broad range of organizations. That makes RosettaNet messages easy to implement and change, rather than rigid and fragile, as is the EDI model.

Q: What were the business forces that drove the development of RosettaNet?

A: Tearnen - The 1990s were all about ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning. But that changed after the technology bust of the 2000's. Some companies had billions of dollars of inventory that had to be written off because they didn't have customers for it. That drove the concept of distributed manufacturing and not owning every piece of the company's supply chain. To that end, the focus is now around VRP - Virtual Resource Planning.

With VRP, companies need to be able to understand and control their supply chain. RosettaNet is the answer to the question, "How can i see my current manufacturing organization that is now distributed among 20 companies, with the same clarity I had when I owned it all?" The object is to provide visibility to the organization of suppliers, optimized as a supply network of distributed manufacturers, and not loose value by creating piles of inventory.

In the last year there has been lots of work on the visibility issue. We are looking at using web services to provide better visibility across the supply chain. We have done a lot to understand the visibility problem and its moving events. Much of that is driven by RFID. So, a SOA, or Services Oriented Architecture and event sharing like that from EPCglobal really changes the landscape.

Q: How do you see RosettaNet extending beyond the high tech sector?

A: Stiphout - There are solutions being developed for companies that do not require deep back-end integration , such as retailers and other organizations that extend beyond high tech as those segments interact with the high tech players. And there are companies in different sectors that are bringing RosettaNet across industries. An example is the chemical industry.

Tearnen - When I was at a conference, I spoke with a mortgage broker whose company uses RosettaNet for secure document exchange. That tells me that there are many opportunities to use the concepts and structures of RosettaNet in a wide variety of applications.