If the world is indeed flat, how has it impacted the aftermarket? A panel moderated by Northwood President Keith Pretty examined a changing aftermarket within a rapidly changing world.

At the 2005 AAPEX Show, Nick Porrini had an epiphany. While discussing business with a German, he realized that the world — at least Nick’s aftermarket world — was indeed flat.

That realization was not mere coincidence. At the same time, many in the aftermarket were reading “The World is Flat” by two-time Pulitzer prize winning journalist Thomas Friedman. In this ground-breaking book, Friedman explains how the world’s various economic, communicative, technological and educational arenas are becoming more even. This is happening through many factors — certainly technology is one of them. Within the aftermarket and other industrial businesses, outsourcing is another reason.

At that moment, Porrini, who has participated on AAIA’s standards committee for the last decade, saw the light. He knew that industry standards would be a critical piece of the globalization puzzle. During Porrini’s presentation, he discussed the need to collaborate on these technology standard projects, and called on the industry to embrace these standards so an ever-flattening world does not leave the aftermarket behind.

For AP Exhaust, a flattened world allowed the company to completely revamp its database and cataloging processes. In 1998, as explained by Jim Gerber, the company had no centralized data control and only produced paper catalogs. Something had to change. So the company looked east toward India, a cost-effective country that has no controls on trade. Its Indian partner completely updated and retooled its data, integrated AAIA standards, added efficiencies, improved development workflow, reduced time to market, improved coverage and, most importantly, improved customer satisfaction. This experience with the IT resources in India resulted in the development of time-saving and cost-efficient IT solutions.

Andreas Assmann from TecDoc Informations System GmbH discussed how his company uses technology and data standards to improve efficiencies, reduce errors and customer satisfaction. The company produces catalogs throughout Europe and, most recently, in China. Because of its global position, it must use nearly 20 languages during the production of various catalogs. Because the data is standardized, customers are free to manipulate the data as necessary. Through standards, communication is facilitated, something that would be impossible in the absence of standard integration.