This Week in IDEA | November 15, 2006

New IDEA Customer

Peninsular Electric Distributors, Inc., an electrical wholesale distributor from West Palm Beach, FL, became an IDEA customer on November 14, 2006. Peninsular Electric has been a family owned and operated business since 1946 with over $7,000,000 in inventory serving the residential, commercial and industrial markets from their 50,000 square foot facility. Peninsular Electric will be taking advantage of the cost saving features and reliability of the Industry Data Exchange (IDX2). Peninsular Electric is also a member of NAED. To learn more about Peninsular Electric Distributors, Inc., please visit them here. Welcome aboard!

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New IRD/CERICOMX Customer

IDEA, a 1SYNC Data Pool On-Board Solution (OBS) partner, implements suppliers that subscribe to the 1SYNC data pool using IDEA's IRD CERICOMX application. IDEA was recently assigned the following supplier:

- PJRS, Inc. – Woodland Hills, CA

This company will be trained to use IRD CERICOMX®, an IDEA branded product for supporting and uploading supplier product information into the GS1 Registry® and GDSN via the 1SYNC Data Pool.

If you would like to learn more about the CERICOMX® product, please contact John Etrie, IDEA IRD Product Manager, here or at (703) 562-4624; or Tony Gaffney, IDEA CERICOMX® Implementation Manager, here or at (508) 386-0261.

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IDW2 Business Information Certified

Lithonia Lighting, a provider of the industry’s broadest line of commercial, industrial, institutional and residential fixtures, has met all requirements for the IDW2 Data Audit Certification program. Congratulations to Lithonia!

New validation rules and criteria were added as part of the IDW2 Data Validation Engine when IDW2 became operational in 2005. All IDW2 manufacturers should follow in Lithonia’s exemplary footsteps. It is important to supply distributors with the highest quality data.

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Counterfeit Products

IDW2 Enables Delivery of Product Certification Data

While counterfeiting is rooted in paper money, the issue is also commonplace in many industries. Today, counterfeiters are producing fake electrical products, automotive and aviation parts, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, computers, software apparel and cosmetics. Chances are if a product has value or popularity than someone or some bogus company is trying to counterfeit it for their own financial gain. Worldwide counterfeiting is a $500 billion problem of which $280 billion occurs in North America. In fact, counterfeit products now make up 8% of the world trade, with much of the revenues from large scale operations going to organized crime and, in the worst case, terrorist organizations to pursue acts of crime. The FBI complied strong evidence that the terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing used money made from counterfeit textiles sales from a store in New York City.

End users and consumers think they are getting originals but end up with substitutes that bear counterfeit corporate logos and unauthorized product safety certification marks.

The US government has taken a stronger stand on counterfeiting through enactment of new laws that increased jail time and upped the ante on how much an individual or organization can be fined.

To deter counterfeiters industry organizations like NAM, NEMA and NAED are making this matter a top priority urging the US Government to stiffen the laws and make it a top trade policy issue with China, where the bulk of counterfeit parts are produced.

Companies are taking action as well by investing in leading edge technologies and security features and have spent up to $4MM (USD) per year to combat counterfeiting and preserve the integrity of their brands. Gillette was one of the first companies to integrate Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) devices with their packaging to help decrease counterfeiting.

One of the easiest ways to assist in an anti counterfeiting campaign is for the manufacturers to inform their wholesale distributor trading partner, which of their products carries a product safety certification, be it UL, CSA group or one of the other approved certification organizations. The Industry Data Warehouse (IDW2) can deliver that information through the population of field 5.290.10 as outlined in the industry data standard (Product Descriptor Data or PDD). Today only FCI USA/Burndy Products, Greenlee, Rockwell Automation and Rockwell Automation Canada are providing product safety certification information via the IDW2.

There is no single anti-counterfeiting measure. However, there is strength in numbers if the channel bands together to stop counterfeiters. If we want to minimize counterfeiting efforts, we need to increase the number of gatekeepers who manage the manufacturing and distribution product cycles. Distributors should demand that their manufacturers populate the certification field per the PDD standard, avoid buying products from unknown or new product sources and stick with long standing trading partners. Hold education sessions with your contractors, inspectors and other end customers on counterfeit goods.

Don’t be misled that counterfeiting only happens to others. There are many examples of where counterfeit conduit, circuit breakers, lamps etc., have been discovered. Take action; take a stance and start by identifying, via the IDW2, which of your products are certified.

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WEBINAR UPDATE: What suppliers should know before they begin a VMI program

Join us for a rescheduled webinar on December 1!!

Presenters: Bob Jennings, Vice President of Sales,
Datalliance; Bob Kuntzman, Requirements Planning Manager,
McNaughton-McKay Electric Company

Title: What suppliers should know before they begin a VMI program
Date: Friday, December 1, 2006
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST

Vendor managed inventory continues to gain in popularity within the electrical industry. This webinar will highlight some of the challenges encountered when establishing a successful VMI relationship and will provide insight from one of the industry’s leading distributors.

Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now
here.

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Automated Deletion Management

The product change management program, part of the IDW2 upgrade, was implemented on Monday, November 13th.

Changes include:

- Two new Item Status Codes (‘K’ for unpublished items and ‘W’ for withdrawn items)
- Nine new IDW2 DVE scrubbing rules
- A new automated deletion management process.

The first clean-up step was to extract all of the items with Item Status as ‘D’ or ‘C’ and where the Item Status was older than 30 days. From now on, the IDW2 will perform daily sweeps for items to be removed after 30 days of exposure (for downloads) and these include those with Item Status of ‘D’, ‘C’, and ‘W’. The Data Content Subcommittee team of distributors and manufacturers established the exposure period of 30 days to allow for different users’ download schedules.

IDEA recommends daily or weekly IDW2 downloads for optimum data synchronization. Notification messages of items being extracted from the IDW2 in these daily sweeps are sent to each manufacturer and are also available for distributors if they wish. Check out messaging options under Users on the IDW2 web site.

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