The information collected and summarized in this document relates to the forecasted future state of the inventory visibility tools for the Min/Max business process and their intended use by the automotive supply chain. The Min/Max business process allows the supplier to see (by item number) the customer's inventory level, the minimum and maximum inventory specifications, and other pertinent data to make a decision to ship or not ship. The intent of the document is to show that existing EDI practices could be complemented by inventory visibility solutions or that inventory visibility tools can be used entirely. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) test bed was used to test the recommendations included in this document in an AIAG proof of concept. The proof of concept's goal was to demonstrate that customer data can be exchanged and processed by developing standards that provide a way for suppliers to use a single inventory visualization tool to view all customers' inventory information. Therefore, suppliers could eliminate the need to support multiple customer tools providing the same utility and instead, select one inventory visibility tool that best suits their needs. The proof of concept was completed in August 2004 and was deemed a success. For more information on the entire IV&I Min/Max project and its results, please see the Proof of Concept Phase 1 Project Summary (I-1).
