The Heavy Duty Distributor Association (HDDA) segment of the Auto Care Association announced the results of its 2016 Feasibility Study with Pricedex Software into the viability of developing product data standards for the heavy-duty aftermarket on Wednesday at Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week (HDAW) 2017 in Las Vegas.
Last year’s study was conducted from June to September last year, and was broken into three stages. Researchers defined the stages as follows:
Stage 1: Investigate the data exchange practices in the light-, heavy-duty, industrial and equipment sectors, considering published industry standards in the light vehicle and industrial segments and the current practices in the heavy-duty sector.
Stage 2: Investigate the various reference data tables used in each sector, identifying opportunities to leverage and enhance heavy-duty practices. Extrapolate useful data which could be used as the building blocks for richer product content.
Stage 3: Investigate current industry practices around product attributes and product category hierarchies. Determine their current and potential uses to support heavy-duty product information and a methodology to prioritize and advance the prospect of developing a standardized library of heavy-duty product attributes.
During their presentation Wednesday, Auto Care’s Bill Hanvey and Sheila Andrews said they were pleased by the results of the study, which they believe shows the aftermarket would support a standardization of product information reporting standards.
“A product standard would allow us to create more robust product data to help you and your counter people sell more product … and become more efficient,” says Hanvey, Auto Care president and CEO. “It would allow all of us to speak the same language.”
Andrews summarized the findings of the study to four key takeaways:
- There is a significant opportunity to create an industry data superset to support the individual requirement of the heavy-duty, industrial equipment and light-duty aftermarkets.
- Supporting data requirements in the heavy-duty aftermarket is not just about trucks. It is about a wide breadth of systems and assembly which are defined by the vocation of the equipment. “This is not a year-make-model catalog,” she says.
- While the product hierarchies used in the heavy-duty and automotive aftermarkets differ and cannot be merged, an excellent opportunity to bootstrap (ATA’s) VMRS part coding by manufacturers can be achieved.
- Defining a standard set of product attributes for heavy-duty parts ‘completes the picture’ in a data standard vision for the heavy-duty aftermarket.
Andrews says the results have motivated HDDA and Auto Care “to pick up the ball and move it forward.”
Auto Care says its next step is pulling in industry representatives willing to assist in the determining the needs and requirements of a standard. The Association plans to recruit aftermarket suppliers and distributor channels for assistance in this area.
“We are creating a working group of heavy-duty experts to take this a step further and see what a superset of data would look like,” adds Hanvey.
