BETHESDA, MD — The Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA) has announced that version 6.0 of the Product Information Exchange Standard (PIES) has been published. PIES is the industry best practice for the management and exchange of product attribute information.
According to AAIA, PIES version 6.0 represents a significant advance for the standard because the documentation has been expanded with a dictionary of data field definitions and the most commonly used code values are included in the specification. In addition, constraints have been added to the XML portion of the standard that ensures that only valid values are allowed in critical data fields.
"Aftermarket decision-makers are beginning to figure out what product information is all about and understand the importance of synchronized data across their distribution chain," said Scott Luckett, vice president, technology standards and solutions, AAIA. "Like a musical piece played out of tune, product data that doesn’t agree between the supplier and the customer will affect every system it touches – and the effects are not good."
At the same time as the release of PIES 6.0, AAIA announced a new web portal for the Aftermarket Brand Code table, powered by Pricedex Software.
"Standardized product line and brand codes are essential to the use of PIES and the industry needed an online, real-time method of accessing these codes and petitioning for new codes. AAIA is grateful to Pricedex for its technical contribution in support of the standard," Luckett said.
The Brand Code table that Pricedex has enabled will make it much easier for companies to identify the brand codes they need while making it faster for AAIA to respond to new code requests.
The latest version of PIES and access to the Brand Code table are available by visiting the "Standards & Technology" page at www.aftermarket.org.
