CWA 16667:2013

Reference Architecture 2.0 for eBusiness harmonisation in Textile/Clothing and Footwear sectors CWA 16667:2013

Scope

1. The aim of this document is to offer a Guideline of the updated Reference Architecture (RA) for the eBusiness harmonisation in the Textile Clothing and Footwear sectors as it results from the activities of the CEN Workshop “eBusiness in the textile, clothing and footwear sectors (WS eBIZ)”.

The eBIZ architecture aims to enable interoperability between existing systems and organisations. Achieving it, would lower the threshold for starting eBusiness both for large enterprises and for medium and small actors in the supply chain and would also encourage technology suppliers to provide better support and services for eBusiness.
It can be used as reference both for new eBusiness implementations and by existing users needing to modify their systems or to achieve interoperability with others.

The first version of the Reference Architecture was developed in 2009 in the framework of the eBIZ-TCF project (www.eBIZ-TCF.eu), a DG Enterprise and Industry initiative that was an European large scale initiative to foster the adoption of eBusiness and related technologies and standards in sectors characterised by a large presence of SMEs and by a low level of adoption of eBusiness and interoperability standards.
This document is the final version of the Reference Architecture of eBIZ, released in 2013.
The CEN Workshop on eBusiness in the textile, clothing and footwear sectors (WS/eBIZ) has performed an activity to review and update the RA in order to satisfy new requirements and progress in the real textile, clothing and footwear (TCF) industry.

2. As main initial requisite, wherever possible, the architecture’s specifications are based on existing public standards and already running experiences.
In general terms, the RA does not aim to develop or validate a new technology or a new software but aims to setup an approach to foster eBusiness adoption (eAdoption) in two sectors dominated by SMEs through a work of harmonisation that is strongly aware of the standardisation achievements.

The key features of the architecture:

• Based on past experiences of existing communities of users and European and International public standards.
• Inclusive approach: open, designed to support many models and many solutions (ASP, P2P, Hub…).
• Public and usable: public and usable specifications to reduce the gap between standard experts and company managers and technicians.
• Scalable: of value to small and medium enterprises as well as large organisations.
• Targeted to real needs: the different requirements of manufacturing networks and of production to retail relationships.

In short the architecture aims to create a favourable environment to establish a collaboration between producers and between producers and retail organisations.

3. For the producer-retail supply chains (downstream part of the supply chain) and for the producer-supplier networks (upstream part) different requirements were outlined in the past analysis reports (produced by the eBIZ-TCF project and by CEN WS eBIZ [1]) and the architecture started from them in order to propose appropriate technological and methodological specifications to cover topics such as data models, communication protocols and product classification.

4. The document offers a guideline for a possible and coherent reference framework of existing specifications and initiatives that enable the design of eBusiness experiences; a strong focus is on the reference scenarios and on some general requirements; when developed and maintained by third parties, the technical specifications are referenced from their sources so that it is easy to design harmonised eBusiness solutions.

5. This document is the FINAL CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) delivered by the CEN Workshop on eBusiness in the textile, clothing and footwear sectors (WS/eBIZ) in the framework of the activities of Reference Architecture Updating (Task 2 of WS/eBIZ workplan).