History

ETIM has ist origin in The Netherlands and was born there in the beginning of the 90s from the idea, to be able to exchange productinformation in a structured manner. For this reason, the Dutch UNETO (Industrial Assocaition of Electrotechnical Companies) in cooperation with industry and wholesale created a hierachically graded structure which contained article-classes and the article-groups with their features. Since then, ETIM was developed further continuously. ETIM established itself as a common standard and receives lots of support.

ETIM is being promoted in Germany since 1995. In August 1996 representatives of industry(ZVEI), wholesale(VEG) and commerce(ZVEH) met to form a task force that began testing ETIM mid 1997.

In 1997 the Swiss EDS, the central wholesaler association in Switzerland, decided to use ETIM. After all manufacturers were requested to participate, the implementing-phase began.
The resulting ELDAS-Model is based on the UNETO-ETIM.

In 1999 the registered association ETIM Deutschland e.V. based in Cologne was established. The nine founding members represent over 90% of the electro-wholesale market. The objective of the association is to create a classification system for products being distributed over the electro-wholesale, that is based on the technical features of the articles. The association will promote the introduction and the usage of this classification system across the business.

In the middle of 2001, ETIM Deutschland e.V. and the eCl@ss-Initiative of the Institute of leading German Companies (Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft e.V.) agreed to a close cooperation and the integration of the ETIM-model in the intersectoral classificationsystem eCl@ss. This was once again confirmed in an official statement to the status of eCl@ss in December 2004. ETIM has been integrated in eCl@ss from version 4.0. ETIM now manages the eCl@ss-Taskforce 27 for the electro-article sector. Here eCl@ss forms the superior frame and ETIM is responsible for the contents.
Since 2008 the German ministry of economics supports the integration of ETIM / eCL@ss via the project “eCL@ss für den Mittelstand”.

The membership of the association has been available for all participants of commerce - suppliers as well as sustaining members like independent institutes or software companies since the end of 2003.
Beginning of 2010 ETIM Deutschland e. V. has more than 80 members from the complete industry.