FORTRAS
(Information Technology Management)
Tech
What is FORTRAS?
Fortras (Forschungs und Entwicklungsgesellschaft für Transportwesen or: Research and Development Corporation for the Transportation Sector) is an EDI standard for data exchange between carriers. Fortras was the designation of an independent company until 2001, when it merged with System Alliance. The designation 'Fortras' is now solely used for the EDI standard that also is used outside of System Alliance. Important Fortras message types are "BORD" for consignment information (comparable to EDIFACT's IFCSUM), "ENTL" for unloading reports from the receiving carrier, and "STAT" for status information (comparable to EDIFACT's IFTSTA). Fortras messages consist of a sequence of lines with a fixed number of characters, e.g. 80, 128, or 512 and data elements are placed on fixed positions on each line. The document type is specified by a letter and a record number at the beginning of the line.