ASN or EPCIS messages ?

Question

Dear Gurus ,
In the frame of the serialization for pharma industries, we need to receive from Contract Manufacturers (CMO)  the aggregated structure of what they have been producing. That aggregated structure need to contain all the serial numbers ( whether SGTIN or SSCC depending on the packaging level ). The  goal is to update the Auto ID Infrastructure with that packaging structure .
At present we request to provide the data by means of an Advanced Shipping Notification, which is mapped into to the standard  IDOC  DELVRY05 ( because the DELVRY05 is able to conatin all the EPCs for the packaging structure) .
That approach has been set in place and works correctly , I mean that when the DELVRY05 is received the EPCs are are written to AII and they get the status " planned " , at the same time an Inbound Delivery is created in ECC , and at Post goods Receipt of the Inbound Delivery , the EPCs get the satus "in stock " in AII.
Now some CMOs are proposing to use EPCIS messages instead of ASNs.
And there my worry starts : when I look to EPCIS messages, I see a pretty lean content : date , time , EPCs , structure of the EPCs , action ,but for instance no Delivery number .
So my question is : to transfer Goods Receipt data to us , should the CMO send an ASN or should he send an EPCIS message ( which would force us to make quite a lot of customizing ) , or did I really miss something ? .
Thank you and regards to all

Answer 1

Hi Alain Moreels,
Technically Delivery Number can be part of the EPCIS message. You can ask your CMOs to send delivery number under the EPCIS Business Transactions list node. (refer to section 14.3 GS1 Healthcare US Implementation Guideline release 1.0  and Section 7.3 of the GS1 EPC Core Business Vocabulary)
<bizTransactionList>
  <bizTransaction type="urn:sap:oer:btt:idlv">urn:sap:oer:bti:idlv:xxxxx.xxxxxx</bizTransaction>
</bizTransactionList>
Here "urn:sap:oer:btt:idlv" says that it is an inbound delivery.
Now coming to the functional piece of it... how are you receiving product from these CMOs prior to serialization? Why don't you continue to use this existing process to create inbound delivery in SAP ECC and to record serial-ID information in SAP AII you can use EPCIS message?
It all depends on your/clients long term strategy on whether you use one/multiple inbound documents to update SAP ECC and SAP AII during goods receipt.
And also one bigger question here is "Can EPCIS message replace ASN?"  to answer, which I believe we have to wait and see for guidelines from GS1, HDMA, etc standards companies and also see what the industry direction is on this.
Regards,
BRV