HDDA: Heavy Duty rolled out its long-anticipated data standards solution for the heavy-duty aftermarket yesterday at Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week (HDAW), which is taking place Jan 27-30 in Grapevine, Texas. The data standards are offered as a new expansion of the Product Information Exchange Standard (PIES) and provide nearly two dozen product categories in the heavy-duty data through the Auto Care Vehicle Information Portal (Auto Care VIP).
Using PIES, heavy-duty businesses can now access product data standards, which serve as a guideline for the industry’s best practices for communicating product information between heavy-duty aftermarket suppliers and its selling chain under one format. Through the use of data standards, businesses are able to:
- Enable and facilitate digital strategies and e-commerce: streamlining product information generation, increasing speed to market;
- Increase sales, decrease returns: reducing ordering and shipping errors with data sent and understood correctly; and
- Provide better customer service: ensuring complete and replete product information is available for customer support at the counter and on the web.
With 20 years of expertise in providing aftermarket product data standards, the PIES expansion to include heavy-duty data can reduce the “cost of doing business” for heavy-duty companies by up to 20% – which could translate to potential business profit improvement of 2-3%.[1] The introduction of heavy duty data to PIES signifies a 50% increase in total VIP Product Attribute database (PAdb) data coverage and 85% of all parts sold across the industry.
The addition of heavy-duty data into PIES covers:
- 20 product categories
- 9,000+ components
- 63,000+ attributes
The 20 heavy-duty product categories that will progressively be made available through subscription to PIES include:
| Air Conditioning, Heating & Ventilating System | Exhaust System |
| Air Intake System | Frame Components |
| Axles – Driven, Front Steering | Front Steer Axle Wheel End Components |
| Axles – Driven, Rear | Fuel System |
| Axles – Front Steering | Ignition System |
| Axles – Non-Driven, Rear | Lighting System |
| Brakes | Modules/Relays – Electrical |
| Charging System | Power Plant |
| Cooling System | Supplemental Information Devices |
| Cranking System | Suspension |
Data Standards for Heavy Duty using PIES is currently available at a 30% discount, exclusively to new subscribers to the Auto Care VIP PAdb, until Feb. 29. Qualifying businesses attending the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) Annual Meeting on Feb. 24-27 in Atlanta also will be able to take advantage of this new user discount.
For more information about heavy duty standards, or to subscribe visit autocare.org/hdstandards or contact Sheila Andrews, community liaison, at [email protected] or Scott Howat, business development executive, at [email protected].
