In 1998 the Voluntary Inter-industry Commerce Standards Committee (VICS) became involved in the movement, which enabled it to make major strides forward. VICS was formed in 1986 to develop barcode and electronic data interchange standards for the retail industry. The involvement of VICS meant that other organisations could participate in the validation and testing of the CPFR concept. With VICS support, organisations including Procter & Gamble, Kmart and Kimberly-Clark undertook pilots to test the idea of sharing information to improve inventory handling. One of the pilots in the UK grocery sector is described in Case study 8.3.