[September 08, 1999] "The PDX (Product Definition Exchange) Standard Group consists of leading corporations and standards organizations in electronics manufacturing. [E.g., NIST, Intel, Agile, Digital Marker, Marshall, IPC, PeopleSoft, Solectron, Unicam, etc.] It is a working group of the NEMI VFIIP (National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative, Virtual Factory Information Interchange Project). The PDX standardization effort is focused on the problem of communicating product content information between original equipment manufacturers (OEM), electronic manufacturing service (EMS) providers and component suppliers. The PDX standard is based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), which provides a simple yet powerful and flexible way to encode structured data into a format that is both human and machine-readable. The PDX standard provides a way to describe product content (BOMs, AMLs, Drawings, etc.), ECRs, ECOs, Deviations and RFQs in an XML format. This standard will enable dramatic efficiency improvements throughout the supply chain since partners will have a way to exchange product content and changes in a common language."
From IPC 2571: "The Product Data eXchange 1.0 standard defines an XML encoding scheme that enables a total product definition to be described at a level appropriate to facilitate supply chain interactions. The scheme is defined for bill of materials (BOM), approved manufacturer list (AML), changes (Engineering, Manufacturing, Product) and references to documents describing geometric and other definition characteristics. IPC 2571 is the umbrella specification for other IPC 2570-series specifications. It describes the Package element that is required for every Product Data eXchange implementation, as well as other common elements shared across the 2570 series. The sectional standards provide application exchange capability. IPC 2576, for instance, transfers as-built product configuration data, and IPC 2578 defines specific product definition elements such as items, changes, bills of material (BOMs), and approved manufacturing lists (AMLs). The IPC 2570-series of standards transfer the data required to support the following business processes: (1) Quote request; (2) Manufacturing; (3) Engineering change management, including signoff; (4) Work in Process; (5) Report on Quality; (6) Report on as-built product configuration..." See the DTD published in the 2001-11 specification.
IPC Standards announced 2001-11-12:
IPC-2571. "Generic Requirements for Supply Chain Communication of Product Data Exchange." 43 pages. November 2001. This standard "defines an XML encoding scheme that enables a total product definition to be described at a level appropriate to facilitate supply chain interactions. The standard is designed to transfer technical information including bill of materials (BOM), approved manufacturer list (AML), as-built product configuration, and change (Engineering, Manufacturing, Product) information." [cache]
IPC-2576. "Sectional Requirements for Supply Chain Communication of As-Built Product Data." 14 pages. November 2001. This sectional standard "provides an XML encoding schema to allow electronics manufacturing supply chain partners to exchange as-built product configuration and manufacturing process information. The information represented by this standard may be used to continue to support products throughout their life cycles. The information represented in this standard includes: as-built product characteristics related to form, fit and function; serialization; batch/lot information; manufacturing site; manufacturing date; part number; component and sub-assembly data." [cache]
IPC-2578. "Sectional Requirements for Supply Chain Communication of Product Design Configuration Data." 34 pages. November 2001. This sectional standard "provides an XML encoding scheme to allow electronics manufacturing supply chain partners to exchange sufficient product data to enable distributed manufacturing. The information represented by this standard includes bills of material (BOM), approved manufacturer lists (AML), approved supplier lists (ASL), change history and engineering change orders, and a high-level description of the components listed on a bill of material." [cache]
IPC-2577. Draft. "Sectional Requirements for the Supply Chain (B2B) Communication of Quality Product Data." 50 pages. November 2001. This standard (IPC 2577) covers the sectional requirements for Product Quality, Quality manufacturing and Quality repair information including Failure Tracking. This standard defines an XML encoding scheme that captures the setting and updating of quality goals, communicating and responding to quality excursions and reporting actual data from manufacturing and repair operations. The IPC-2577 standard defines how manufacturing and repair product quality and information is exchanged between supply chain partners. Information represented in this standard includes such things as; manufacturing site, manufacturing date, part number, serial number, manufacturing quality results and failure tracking data." [cache]
References:
Members - NIST, Intel, Agile, Digital Marker, Marshall, IPC, PeopleSoft, Solectron, Unicam, etc.
IPC 2571 Document Type Definition (DTD). 2001-11. "This specification uses a DTD instead of XML Schemas; it is expected that a future version of Product Data eXchange XML definitions will be written in XML Schema. The following is a master DTD that includes all elements from the IPC-2571, IPC-2576 and IPC-2578." [extracted from the PDF spec]
[March 24, 2000] "Suppliers Demonstrate Implementation of Standards Developed by NEMI's Virtual Factory Project. Netfish Technologies and Agile Software Demonstrate New Technology Aimed At Automating and Standardizing the Exchange of Technical Engineering And Manufacturing Data for Improved Data Integrity and Shorter Cycle Times." - "The National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI) today announced that its Virtual Factory Information Interchange Project (VFIIP) has successfully demonstrated the use of a candidate NEMI/IPC standard to support the electronic exchange of engineering and manufacturing information across the supply chain. Two project participants -- Netfish Technologies, Inc., a leader in XML-based business-to-business e-commerce solutions, and Agile Software, a leading supplier of business-to-business collaborative manufacturing commerce solutions -- used the proposed VFIIP Product Data Exchange (PDX) standard to exchange data over the Internet in a simulated transaction between an OEM and an electronic manufacturing services (EMS) provider. 'This demonstration highlights the benefits of automating and standardizing the exchange of data within the electronics manufacturing supply chain. It also shows the effectiveness of a collaborative effort among companies within the supply chain to develop and implement standards that will benefit the industry as a whole,'' stated Jim McElroy, executive director and CEO of NEMI. 'Even though the Virtual Factory Project is a relatively new project, we already have a couple of supplier companies that are beginning to implement the standards that the group is generating.' The demonstration, shown at IPC's recent Electronics Assembly Process Exhibition and Conference (APEX), utilized PDX to transfer a complete product definition package across the Internet in a simulated exchange between an OEM and an EMS provider. The PDX standard (IPC 2571) was developed by the VFIIP team to facilitate transactions between supply chain partners such as quoting, production, product configuration, test and kit interactions. PDX is one of a suite of IPC standards aimed at enabling a robust and flexible mechanism for supply chain communications." See also [from March 06, 2000] "NEMI Launches 'Virtual Factory' Project to Standardize Information Exchange Across the Supply Chain." ['NEMI has become a coalition partner of RosettaNet and is collaborating with the group on development of standard electronic business interfaces. The Virtual Factory Project will utilize the structure and methodology of RosettaNet to develop and deploy solutions. RosettaNet will promote the use of the data interchange standards resulting from collaborative efforts between the two groups.']
[September 08, 1999] "IPC, NEMI Team to Standardize Factory Floor and Supply Chain Communications." - "Association Connecting Electronics Industries and the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI) today announced their collaboration on a new suite of standards for communicating on the factory floor and throughout the supply chain. Under the arrangement, IPC will publish two series of standards: IPC- 2540, for factory floor communication, and IPC-2570, for supply chain communication. NEMI's Factory Information Systems (FIS) Technology Implementation Group (TIG) will collaborate with IPC to spearhead the work, following the rules of the IPC standardization process. The supply chain standards will aid OEMs, electronic manufacturing service providers and component suppliers in describing components and materials. The factory floor standards will standardize the language used by assembly placement and test equipment. The new standards will be based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which encodes data into a format that is both human and machine-readable, accommodating their use over the World Wide Web. GenCAM, the industry standard for electronic data transfer, will be used to describe the printed circuit board. The National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative is an industry-led consortium of more than 50 electronic equipment manufacturers, suppliers, associations, government agencies and universities. IPC is a US-based trade association dedicated to the competitive excellence and financial success of its nearly 2,600 member companies which represent all facets of the electronic interconnection industry, including design, printed wiring board manufacturing and electronics assembly."
[September 07, 1999] "Digital Market Joins PDX Standard Group. Standard for Automated Product Content Exchange Proceses Will Improve Efficiency and Time-to-Market, Increasing Profits for Entire Supply Chain." - "Digital Market, Inc. today announced it has joined the PDX (Product Definition eXchange) Standard Group. The company joins the ranks of Agile Software, Intel, Solectron and others in helping to facilitate adoption of a universal communications standard that will promote automated product content exchange processes to improve time-to-market and increase profits for the entire supply chain. The PDX (Product Definition eXchange) Standard Group is a working group of the NEMI VFIIP (National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative, Virtual Factory Information Interchange Project). It includes members from major electronics manufacturers involved with the problems of supply chain communication of product definition data. . . PDX is the Product Definition eXchange standard for the e-supply chain. The PDX standardization effort is focussed on the problem of communicating product content information between OEMs, EMS providers and component suppliers. The standard is based on XML because this provides a simple yet powerful and flexible way to encode structured data into a format that is both human and machine-readable. The PDX standard provides a way to describe product content (BOMs, AMLs, Drawings, etc.), ECRs, ECOs, Deviations and RFQs in an XML format. This standard will enable dramatic efficiency improvements throughout the supply chain since partners will have a way to exchange product content and changes in a common language."
[March 24, 2000] "XML-Based Format Shows Promise for High-Tech Hubs." By Joseph McKendrick. [Reprinted from ENT Online], September 8, 1999. "Agile Anywhere provides an XML-based network of linking applications for various brands of supply chain software. The server component of Agile Anywhere, Agile eHub, can run on top of Oracle8 or SQL Server 7.0. The core application delivers information via product definition exchange (PDX) documents, a format that is comparable in functionality to PDF, the popular document format supported by Adobe Systems (www.adobe.com). PDX is supported by, or under development at, a number of organizations in the electronics industry, including RosettaNet, Compaq Computer Corp., Lucent Technologies and Solectron. . . Agile's implementation of the PDX format is 'potentially quite important, particularly in the industries they focus on,' says David Yockelson, an analyst at Meta Group. 'Everyone's excited about XML and its ability to act as a neutral format language for advanced supply chain collaboration, such as engineering changes to RFPs. The problem is that up until now there has been an absence of industry standards for implementing in XML. PDX represents a collective standard'."
[January 06, 2000] "PEMSTAR Uses PDX-Based Agile eXpress Viewer for Supply Chain Collaboration." - "Agile Software Corporation, a leading provider of collaborative manufacturing commerce solutions for e-supply chains, announced today that Agile eXpress Viewer is now available as a free, hosted application at MyAgile.com., the company's business portal for the supply chain. PEMSTAR, Inc., a leading full-service contract manufacturing and engineering firm for the electronics industry, provides an example of the usefulness of Agile eXpress Viewer to supply chain partners. Agile eXpress Viewer is part of Agile Anywhere, an Internet-centric suite of product content management solutions that allows supply chain partners to publish, manage and collaborate on product content information in real-time on the Internet. With Agile eXpress Viewer, supply chain partners can send and receive PDX. PDX (Product Definition eXchange) is a standard used by e-supply chain members to describe product content (bills of material, approved manufacturers lists, engineering changes, requests for quotation, etc.) in an XML format. Increasing acceptance and use of the PDX standard enables dramatic efficiency improvements throughout the supply chain by providing partners with a means to exchange timely access to product content and product changes in a common language. Agile Software is working with other members of the PDX Standard Group -- including the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI), the National Institute of Standards (NIST), RosettaNet, the Association Connecting Electronics Industries (IPC), Calico Commerce, Marshall Industries, Solectron, ChipCenter, Digital Market, Intel, PeopleSoft, and Unicam Software -- to advance the development of the PDX standard."
