ASNs to UK supermarkets, built in-house

The problem

Supermarkets want to know exactly what's on the lorry before it reaches their dock. That means an advance shipping notice: an EDIFACT DESADV message, sent over AS2, in exactly the shape each retailer expects.

Get the shape wrong and the ASN bounces. Send it late and the delivery is in trouble before it has even left the yard. Every retailer has its own rules, its own test process and its own sign-off.

The warehouse ran a leading WMS. It knew what had been picked and loaded, but it didn't talk to the supermarkets. The WMS vendor could build that link, at their day rate.

What I built

I built the EDI middleware in-house instead. It sits between the WMS and the supermarket chains and does one job: turn despatches into ASNs the retailers accept.

• It takes despatch data from the WMS and builds an EDIFACT DESADV for each delivery.
• It sends the messages over AS2, through an AS2 gateway I run myself.
• It speaks each retailer's format, with each retailer's rules.

It runs in the cloud. I designed it, I built it and I run it.

How it runs now

Despatches leave the WMS and the middleware does the rest: build the DESADV, send it over AS2, to the right retailer, in that retailer's format.

When a retailer changes its spec, or a new retailer comes along, the change is made in-house. There's no day rate to agree first and no queue to join. The warehouse keeps its WMS, the supermarkets get their ASNs, and the link between them is looked after by someone who answers the phone.