Report from the NAPM meeting in Phoenix Jan 23

[Kevin O'Kane <kevoka@AUTO-TROL.com>]

All- 

The National Association of Purchasing Managers (NAPM) had requested a
representative from CGM Open to attend an NAPM meeting in Phoenix Az  to
kick off an XML initiative. I attended this meeting on Jan. 23. Also in
attendance was Laura Walker from OASIS.

The purpose of the meeting was to assemble interested members of NAPM and
software vendors to develop a set of requirements for the non-direct
procurement process. Non-direct procurement means the procurement of goods
and services that do not directly go into the products a company sells.
These requirements are then to be used as a baseline for the evaluation of
all the XML based markup languages either under development, or released,
which pertain to the procurement process. A report, sponsored by the NAPM,
will be released which states which markup languages meet the NAPM
identified requirements for the indirect procurement process. NAPM does not
want to develop another ML, but would rather steer ML's already under
development or released, to satisfy these requirements.

There were two presentations given at this meeting. The first was a small
tutorial on XML in general presented by the CTO of StrategicParts.com. The
second was a comparison of XML to EDI by Kevin Kail from XML Solutions. The
rest of the day was spent in small groups, committing to working on this
project, planning and starting the development of the requirements.

They do not have a need for graphics on the web given their current goals.

Kevin O'Kane
Auto-trol Technology Corp.