A Data Exchange Standard for Fluid Power: Driving Out Cost, Maintaining Margins, Serving Customers.
The NFPA Distributor Council has launched a major project, endorsed by the NFPA Board of Directors, to establish a standard format for exchange of product and price information among fluid power manufacturers and distributors. While the benefits of efficient and accurate data exchange are many, underlying this project are:
The problem being solved is more significant than often realized. Distributors market the products of multiple manufacturers, and often receive product and price information from each manufacturer in a different format.
This resulting confusion keeps supply chain costs unnecessarily high as business partners have to develop programming for multiple data formats or accommodate them with manual data entry.
When distributors are late implementing a price increase, they need to sell significantly more to make up for the lost revenue and profitability. And customer interests aren't adequately served when the multitude of formats makes timely and accurate processing impossible.
Other industries are addressing these issues, putting fluid power at a competitive disadvantage if we choose inaction.
A step in the right direction—speak the same language by using a time- and business-tested standard format for transmission of product and price information.
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The standard Product and Price Information Format (PPIF), endorsed by the NFPA Board of Directors and the NFPA Distributor Council for the fluid power industry, does all this and more.
This ASCII format for transmission of product and price information was developed by the Power Transmission Distributors Association in 1998. More than 75 power transmission industry manufacturers have endorsed the format, including nine who are members of NFPA.
PPIF Format and Related Documents
