In supply chain management (SCM), many companies substitute electronic for printing, mailing, and faxing paper documents, such as purchase orders, invoices, and shipping notices.
a. design processing
b. data interchange
c. data validation
d. design automation

B. Data interchange.

Explanation:

This is generally known to be electronic data interchange(EDI), which involves peer to peer share of documents between business associates or companies you have dealing with.

Here, it is said that an EDI message contains a string of data elements, each of which represents a singular fact, such as a price, product model number, and so forth, separated by delimiter. The entire string is called a data segment. One or more data segments framed by a header and trailer form a transaction set, which is the EDI unit of transmission (equivalent to a message). A transaction set often consists of what would usually be contained in a typical business document or form.

can you explain it better

could you go a bit more in depth with you question? it's quite hard to understand. as soon as you do that i will be glad to : )