Finding The Right Part Is As Easy As PIES

You’ve placed your part order thrilled that you were able to find the part you need. You either picked it up or waited for it to be delivered. When it is finally in your hands — because supply chain issues are leading to longer delivery times — you eagerly open the box only to find that you somehow ordered the wrong part.

The problem could have been avoided if all manufacturers of heavy-duty truck parts adhered to heavy-duty product data standards. Those product standards exist thanks to work of HDDA, the heavy-duty community of the Auto Care Association.

The heavy-duty Product Information Exchange Standard (PIES) provides information on things like product attributes, dimensions, product descriptions, country of origin, pricing, and more. It includes images, videos, and other digital assets. According to Auto Care, PIES is used to communicate product information between heavy-duty aftermarket suppliers and their selling chain under one format. The Product Attribute database part of PIES gives customers an objective way to compare two different products, which is a core benefit of a high-quality online parts seller.

The data standards are said to enable and facilitate e-commerce, which is becoming an increasingly popular way for truck parts distributors and fleets to acquire parts. Data now shows fleets moving outside traditional channels to find the parts they need.

PIES allows suppliers to efficiently communicate information about their products and helps ensure that the customer gets the right part, in the right place, at the right time. When the standards went live in 2020, they included standardized descriptions of products that include more than 9,000 components and 63,000 attributes covering 85% of the parts sold in the aftermarket. This focus on e-commerce's importance in parts procurement highlights structured data.

Work continues to be done on the database to expand and improve it. It is the responsibility of the manufacturer to provide the information needed about their products, and fleets should encourage their parts suppliers to participate to reduce the number of times a wrong part is ordered and to improve the efficiency of the parts supply chain. Improved data also enables data-driven analyses to drive up productivity and lower costs. Furthermore, data collected can tell you a lot about parts performance and service.