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ACES® and PIES™ - Year, Make, Model Applications Only

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About the Award

This award category is intended to recognize excellent source data and proper use of the ACES and PIES data standards. This award is separate from the “Receiver’s Choice Award.” Each submission will be one ACES^® xml file (and its matching PIES^TM xml file). The ACES^® xml file can ONLY contain Year, Make, Model (BaseVehicleID) applications. This award judges ACES^® and PIES^TM files on a variety of areas that ACPN deems as essential when creating best in class ACES^® and PIES^TM data. Please see the judging guidelines for this award for more details.

Eligibility

Submissions must meet these requirements 100% to be considered for judging:

Company Type: Manufacturer/Remanufacturer
Company Membership: Auto Care Association member in good standing
Subscription Status: Must have active VCdb and PAdb subscriptions.
- To check your subscription status, please contact membership@autocare.org. To purchase a subscription, please visit our subscriptions page.
Each submission must be one ACES^® XML file that must ONLY contain Year, Make, Model (BaseVehicleID) applications. and its matching PIES^TM XML file.
Both ACES^® and PIES^TM XML files must be a file produced for a trading partner
Both ACES^® and PIES^TM XML files must pass XSD validations
The ACES^® XML file must be versions 4.1 or 4.2
The PIES^TM XML file must be versions 7.1 or 7.2
Both ACES^® and PIES^TM XML files must utilize October 2024 or newer published database versions (VCdb, Qdb, PCdb, PAdb)
The ACES^® XML file must use Qdb qualifiers partially or fully. (If the ACES^® file does not use Qdb and does not Fitment Notes for any application, the file passes)
The PIES^TMXML file must use PAdb attributes partially or fully
No Labels for reference database ID's present in ACES® and/or PIES™ XML (Seen as XML Comments)

Award Format

Small

(10,000 – 49,999 applications)

Medium

(50,000 – 250,000 applications)

Large

(Over 250,000 applications)

Gold Only (3 Total) – Per ACES^® application-count bracket

Judging

Judging of this award is done in-house by the Auto Care Association, utilizing the AutoCareVIP.com catalog assessment tool to process the ACES^® and PIES^TMXML files. All files will be assessed within a week of the submission. All ACES^®files will be validated against the most recent release of VCdb, Qdb and PCdb. All PIES files will be validated against the live Autocarevip.com database. The ACPN Leadership Council then takes the raw scoring information provided by the catalog assessment tool and applies weighted percentages to the general area scores to determine the winners of the award. The submission with the highest score is considered the winner. (In the case of a tie, the contenders will be re-examined to arrive at a subjective assessment of appropriate levels of over-mapping, effective use of the Qdb, appropriate use of the Note and MfrLabel tags, use of most recent versions of ACES^® and PIES^TM, effective use of the PAdb, and more)

Submission Requirements

Each parent company may submit one entry per ACES^® application-count bracket.
At least one representative from the submitting company must be present during the ACPN conference program at the Auto Care Connect Conference to accept the award in the event that the company is selected as an award recipient. If there is no representative present, the company will be restricted from submitting for any awards the following year.
Entries must be received in full by the deadline (Entry Form, Participant Release Form, ACES^® and PIES^TM Files)

For questions about this specific award, please contact Auto Care's Data Quality Manager:

Tom Schiavo

Judging Guidelines

If the eligibility requirements listed above are met 100% for the award submission, the following judging guidelines are then utilized to judge the submission's ACES^® and PIES^TM XML Files. If the submission does not meet the eligibility requirements 100%, the submission will be disqualified.

The ACES^® and PIES^TM XML files are judged on multiple general areas listed below with weighted percentages.

1% - ACES^® - Header is populated with Company, Sender Name, Sender Phone.

Scoring Note

Based on if Company, Sender Name, Sender Phone are all populated or not.

10% - ACES^® - Applications are invalid VCdb coded configurations free

Scoring Note

Based on percentage of application records with invalid coded configurations. Over 1% will get a score of "0".

Additional Notes

Make / Year-Range Applications - Applications that use Make / Year-Range combinations (using optional vehicle attributes such as Model, Engine or Transmission) will be split into individual applications, and will be validated and counted towards the score.
Validate "No" - Applications that are flagged as Validate "No" will be automatically flagged as "Yes", and will be validated and counted towards the score. Although the standard allows for this, it is highly recommended that you request to have vehicles added the Vehicle Configuration database (VCdb).

20% - ACES^® - Applications are overlap/duplicate free

Scoring Note
Based on percentage of application records that are overlaps/duplicates. Over 1% will get a score of "0".

Additional Notes
The MFR Label is considered in differentiating applications.

10% - ACES^® - Qdb Level of Usage

Scoring Note

Based on the percentage use of unique QualifierID 's versus the sum of unique QualifierIDs and unique fitment notes.

3% - ACES^® - All part numbers use valid PartTerminologyID's and PositionID combinations

Scoring Note

Based on the percentage of part numbers that use valid PartTerminologyID's and PositionID combinations.

3% - ACES^® - All ACES^® part numbers are found in PIES™

Scoring Note

Based on percentage of part numbers found in the ACES® file that are also found in the PIES^TM file.

1% - PIES^TM - Header Segment

Header is populated with Technical Contact and Contact Email.

Scoring Note

Based on if Technical Contact and Contact Email are all populated or not.

7% - PIES^TM - Item Segment

All part numbers use valid PartTerminologyID's
All ACES® part numbers are flagged as "Y" in PIES Element "ACESApplication"
All part numbers have unique GTINs