The effort to exchange information efficiently along the supply chain will be supported by standards for electronic data interchange. With EDI, it is possible to transfer business documents, external and internal, on the one hand between different companies and on the other hand within the own company. Just in the automotive industry, which is especially focused in this paper, a fast and effective business documents exchange is sometimes indispensable. Therefore an effective EDI-system with sensible transaction standards is absolutely essential. Therefore the motivation for selecting two existing standards was given and a comparison of them should be continued. Additionally a permanent refer to the automotive industry should be done. The focus on this paper is based on GS1-XML and EDIFACT, as standards, which should enable a JIT/JIS business document exchange. With the help of a Study, the try to use the standards in a practical way and the use of statements from the literature, an achievement is reached, which allows conclusions about those both standards in the JIT/JIS sourcing model of the automotive industry. Concerning selected criteria, there is no special advantages of XML in comparison with EDIFACT.