New means of communication to help commercial carriers: experiments on a European basis

The main goal of project COST 306 was to carry out a demonstration of electronic data interchange (EDI) through trials of live operation in the field of transport across national borders, at the European scale (EEC, EFTA), with real international trade partners, to demonstrate the feasibility of using EDI and drawn the conclusions for the future. For that purpose, formed transport chains had to use internationally accepted solutions which would facilitate the establishment of multilateral EDI and improve open transport information system connectivity. In order to evaluate the trial, a pre and post-survey of 40 participating companies was undertaken. In general, the conclusions from these surveys indicated a real satisfaction in the results of the trials. However, there are a number of problems that give rise to some concern, specifically a lack of available software and unsatisfactory connectivity between VANs and the inability of PTTs to provide adequate international communication facilities. On the other hand, the standardised COST 306 messages covered the business needs for which they were designed