Walldorf, Germany August 8, 2002 SAP AG announced this week that its SAP Advanced Planner & Optimizer (SAP APO) has completed the final phase for Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR) Interoperability Compliance Testing, sponsored by the Uniform Code Council Inc. (UCC). As a result, solutions incorporating SAP APO, including mySAP Supply Chain Management (mySAP SCM), mySAP Consumer Products and mySAP Retail are now recognized as conforming to industry standards for interoperability.
In order to pass the conformance-test phase, SAP underwent testing and evaluation to ensure its software offering conforms to standard schemas for basic communication, schemas and data exchange. This was in response to a growing number of retailers that are demanding that suppliers implement solutions for collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment.
The UCC Global Solution Interoperability Testing Program sponsored the test process, which seeks to promote interoperability among solution providers and expand the global market for CPFR applications by ensuring that products from different suppliers work together. CPFR helps buyers and sellers collaborate and establish relationships by promoting co-managed processes and shared information. SAP said that by conforming to these standards it is able to integrate with other CPFR-tested solution providers.
Test plans and data were developed by incorporating actual cases from sponsoring organizations within the UCC and the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Standards Association (VICS). All testing was done via the Internet through http protocol. Cross tests were done with all participating suppliers against each other to ensure interoperability among all suppliers' products during the testing.
