Beginning in the transportation industry and spreading to retail and manufacturing, firms adopted Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to transmit standardized purchase orders, invoices, shipping notices, and customs documents directly between computer systems. Industry bodies developed common message formats, including ANSI X12 in the United States and later EDIFACT internationally, so that trading partners using different internal software could exchange documents reliably. EDI reduced paperwork, order errors, and processing delays across long international supply chains. It became a prerequisite for the tightly coordinated, low-inventory logistics systems that followed.
Relevance to Trade History
EDI automated the paperwork of international trade, enabling faster, more reliable coordination between manufacturers, carriers, and retailers across borders.
Read the full story in our article Barcodes and the Automation of Product Tracking.
Source: United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. See our Sources & Methodology page for how we select and verify references.