The use of a private internet for inter-corporate EDI has solved the three largest problems facing electronic data interchange!
First, messages (work order relases, forecasts, etc.) to customer or partner companies no longer stack up at bottlenecks neither at the machines running the EDI applications nor at a VAN that waits for all messages before transmitting them.
At Dofasco Steel (the case on which the diagrams are based), the delivery time was cut from hours to about one minute.
Second, the distribution of messages has become significantly cheaper, alllowing the inclusion of all minor trading partners in the EDI system.
At Dofasco Steel, the average monthly recurring costs per transaction with each trading partner was reduced 68%.
Third, the recipient company no longer needs a VAN connection in 24-hour standby mode to accept VAN messages, and the distributed messages are now automatically pushed to a desktop connected to the extranet, independently of how frequently the recipient company dials and checks messages every day.