Member companies of the Association of Dental Dealers in Europe (ADDE) and of the European Dental Industry (FIDE) developed since 2006 a common project called EDI-Dent. EDI means “Electronic Data Interchange”. EDI is a collective term for all electronic procedures for the automatic transmission of structured messages between the electronic systems of the dental dealer and the dental manufacturer. With this system all partner companies can exchange several documents such as order, order entry, order confirmation, shipment information or invoice on an electronic way.

Many dealer and manufacturing companies supported this project, because the use of EDI provides several main advantages for the partner companies:

• The EDI data interchange is significantly faster than before due to a highly increased rate of transmission.
• The improved data integrity reduces the number of mistakes; this also avoids discrepancies and misinterpretations, which can occur with manual entry of data.
• Other positive side-effects are cost reductions for placing orders, shipment information or invoices; shorter lead times and execute cycles; reduced inventories; optimised business processes; accelerated processing (transmission in a matter of seconds); and elimination of postal charges. The partner company can respond quickly; the order confirmation and the dispatch notification allow the partners to give their customers a definite date of delivery.

Large companies appreciate this new system. However, up to now, small and medium-sized companies could usually not participate in this electronic dialogue due to the costs and efforts involved. Various companies requested to develop a supporting tool which would allow small and medium-sized dealers and suppliers to participate in the EDI system.

ADDE has commissioned a software module which will enable interested distributors and manufacturers to participate in EDI-Dent free of charge.

On the common ADDE and FIDE website www.edident.info which was specifically set up for this purpose, all interested companies can get more information about EDI-Dent.

For detailed information please contact the ADDE secretariat at the following address:

Association of Dental Dealers in Europe
General Secretariat
Moosstrasse 2
CH-3073 Gümligen-Berne / Switzerland

Phone: +41 31 952 78 92
Fax:     +41 31 952 76 83

E-mail: info@adde.info