How do you merge EDI data?

A typical example of EDI data merge is GLOBAL DATA SYNCRONIZATION NETWORK (GDSN). Suppliers merge, maintain, validate Master Data for products . Product content is aggregated, consolidated on the platform and provided to business partners from one source in a quality-assured manner for their purchasing, logistics, sales processes. VENDOR MANAGED INVENTORY (VMI) is another example of EDI data merge. Supplier and customer establish a VMI agreement for shipping and maintaining inventory. Supplier sells and ships inventory to customer. Customer reports goods' consumption via EDI Inventory Report ,integrated in the VMI Web App ,and interfaced with SAP for Master Data updates. Order proposal is generated by App and sent to Customer via EDI.

During, my earlier experiences working at an oil company, inventory information was shared between trading partners. EDIFACT was the EDI standard used and a particular transaction named INVRPT was used to contain the information. In my situation, Value Added Networks (VANS) which were third-party service providers, would take EDIFACT messages, translate them, and forward the information to the trading partners. Later My company acquired dedicated translation software. A system called Gentran. This software translated the EDIFACT messages into formats that could be used by our internal systems.

Adding to my contribution . After receiving translated data from the VAN, custom in-house software was used to merge data from more than one source . We're more than 1 destination points where merged data was sent tio.

Usually in my experience when I worked before, there was already integrated APIs of the INFOR ERP system in Eclipse2022 IDE which would have already preprogrammed expectations of what data is expected to be in input&output for successful mapping outcome, and there was well marked mandatory fields that needed to be connected for message to be correctly mapped, and secondary which could be custom per situation per customer set.That helped a lot because after that you could find any solution more available if you wished to investigate alone for which standard is best practice to put some kind of information in segment but to not cause after that translation error,which was right way of structuring the mapping and avoiding flaws of manual work.

These data mapping specialized software applications can automate the mapping of data between different EDI formats and structures. They can identify and match corresponding data fields, apply data transformations, and generate compliant output files. Data mapping tools can significantly improve efficiency and accuracy compared to manual methods.

Best practices of merging of EDI data using a programming language (in this case Java) if you work with INFOR APIs in MEC (Manufacturing Execution System) can be explained in two simple steps: Firstly, to well know input and output expected data and with which API it should be processing that data. Secondly, to create a counter for that API and counter represented variable that will parse through many SWITCH cases that will be triggered per case number. In this way can be filling data for EDI many customers that Client has, as it will go on from one case to other per data per customer that it requires for EDI data to be send out. Same logic for other mappings can be used and that logic can be compared and used for merging two mappings.

Sender id, receiver id and document type would form the key to this EDI document merge. Once identified, tag each document with this information, to determine translation needs and enveloping/de-enveloping needs. Translation, enveloping/de-enveloping, merge could be achieved using the tagged information, associated assigned translation and de/envelope objects, and specified time of merge. In outbound, translated documents are enveloped at the time of merge. In inbound, de-enveloped, translated documents are merged at specified time. Manual merging of documents would be time consuming and error prone. EDI software have readily available services for document merge. For EDI merge tool development, discussed points could be considered!

The best approach for merging EDI data depends on several factors, including the volume and complexity of data, budget constraints, technical expertise, and desired level of automation.