A. Luís Osório

RFID together with multi-agent systems to control global value chains

Abstract Nowadays, the cooperative intelligent transport systems are part of a largest system. Transportations are modal operations integrated in logistics and, logistics is the main process of the supply chain management. The supply chain strategic management as a simultaneous local and global value chain is a collaborative/cooperative organization of stakeholders, many times in co-opetition, to perform a service to the customers respecting the time, place, price and quality levels. The transportation, like other logistics operations must add value, which is achieved in this case through compression lead times and order fulfillments. The complex suppliers network and the distribution channels must be efficient and the integral visibility (monitoring and tracing) of supply chain is a significant source of competitive advantage. Nowadays, the competition is not discussed between companies but among supply chains. This paper aims to evidence the current and emerging manufacturing and logistics system challenges as a new field of opportunities for the automation and control systems research community. Furthermore, the paper forecasts the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies integrated into an information and communication technologies (ICT) framework based on distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) supported by a multi-agent system (MAS), as the most value advantage of supply chain management (SCM) in a cooperative intelligent logistics systems. Logistical platforms (production or distribution) as nodes of added value of supplying and distribution networks are proposed as critical points of the visibility of the inventory, where these technological needs are more evident.

NFC Technologies in Mobile Phones and Emerging Applications

The main purpose of this paper is to introduce some new non-conventional applications to allow the exploitation of today’s mobile phone resources, namely their connectivity capabilities to other devices. There is a great potential for applications to take advantage of these available resources, to perceive and interact with the world around us, namely to serve as a user interface to interact with controlled devices. Recently beyond the necessary speaker and microphone, cell phones incorporate more sensing, processing and storage capabilities as well as alternative communication system, e.g. digital camera, Bluetooth. This paper addresses, in particular, the Near Field Communication (NFC) incorporated in cell phones and enumerates some of its main promising applications like in device monitoring and control.

Cooperation enabled systems for collaborative networks

A fast evolution to collaborative business models requires novel strategies for the development of collaboration-based information technology (IT) solutions. The complexity of building such solutions based on heterogeneous sub-systems requires a multidisciplinary approach, involving the perspectives of technology and business/management. In this direction, a novel approach is proposed, introducing the notion of Cooperation Enabled System as an autonomous and adaptive computational component as the base constructor to develop open (collaborative) IT solutions.

Towards a Reference Architecture for a Collaborative Intelligent Transport System Infrastructure

The intelligent transport systems, which aim at providing smarter transport infrastructures and sustainable mobility, are deeply grounded on the Information and Communication Technologies. Current trends in the development of integrated complex systems, such as integrated road/highway concessions management, require new strategies to match business processes to the underlying technology. New road management policies, supported on new user-payer models, and increasing concerns about traffic safety, establish requirements for a new family of emergent business services. Offering the driver the possibility to extend current tolling business service contracts to make possible the access to public transport systems, parking areas, subscription to innovative insurance service, etc., all covered by a single contract, is a promising strategy to promote sustainable and safe mobility. Nevertheless, this new wave of emergent business services requires high interoperability among a diversity of (heterogeneous) technology systems considering both vehicle and road infrastructures. This paper discusses an approach to the required ICT-based intelligent infrastructure based on a collaborative network of stakeholders as contributors to the business service offering.

Concurrent engineering in virtual enterprises: the extended CIM-FACE architecture

The information technologies are commonly accepted as one of the keys to support the new enterprise paradigms emerging in the global market. Enterprises are not any more monolithic production infrastructures but rather nodes contributing to a wide spread production system. The intrinsic distribution aspects of the Virtual Enterprise paradigm brought new challenges to the research arena. The Internet and in particular the Web infrastructure used as a new information “highway” can link together distributed activity execution agents, persons or more basic computational processes. This paper presents the VCIM-FACE architecture as an integrating infrastructure to support concurrent engineering in the virtual enterprise. Co-operative product developments, grouping specialised teams spread through various enterprises, is fundamental to this new manufacturing paradigm. Issues like distributed execution of Business Plans, security and privacy, and execution control of concurrent engineering activities are some of the topics discussed in this paper.

Enterprise Collaboration Network for Transport and Logistics Services

The development of the Single Window concept (unique access/contact point for composite services) for the multimodal door-to-door freight transport management is a complex endeavour that is being addressed by the European MIELE project. Led by port authorities, the project identified the need for a novel strategy to foster collaboration among stakeholders with a diversity of processes and technology. The multimodal perspective requires a convergence and thus collaboration of maritime, railway, road, and air transport facilities as it is the case for the need of traffic information for a real-time (re)planning if some accident is hindering the current route. This requires that traffic information from different operators is integrated into the freight transport routing planner. Furthermore, a unified coordination and operations management of the existing business processes is lacking. To integrate such contexts, an open enterprise collaboration network (ECoNet) infrastructure is presented and discussed.

Open Services Ecosystem Supporting Collaborative Networks

The growing complexity of the information and communication technologies when coping with innovative business services based on collaborative contributions from multiple stakeholders requires novel and multidisciplinary approaches. Service orientation is a strategic approach to deal with such complexity, and various stakeholders’ information systems. Services or more precisely the autonomous computational agents implementing the services, provide an architectural pattern able to cope with the needs of integrated and distributed collaborative solutions. This paper proposes a service-oriented framework, aiming to support a virtual organizations breeding environment which is the basis to establish short or long term goal-oriented virtual organizations. The notion of integrated business services, where customers receive some value developed through the contribution from a network of companies is a key element.

Reliable and secure communications infrastructure for virtual enterprises

The virtual enterprise paradigm is the key for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to enter into the business-to-business electronic commerce. Nevertheless SMEs require a reliable infrastructure connecting transparently to the global network of enterprises their IT application tools implementing the internal business processes. Such infrastructure is deeply grounded on a communication infrastructure that might offer operative and management mechanisms able to cope with the complexity of the underlying heterogeneous computational and communication available resources. Beyond information communication security (privacy, integrity, and authentication), an operating reliable infrastructure to manage information communication is required. The SME business cannot support the great vulnerability to failures presented by a distributed system made of heterogeneous technologies. The PRODNET Communication Infrastructure aims to offer beyond a secure and high availability communication infrastructure, a set of features to cope with such distribution and heterogeneity implemented by a flexible communication management module. Considering that SMEs do not have their own IT support, the PRODNET Communication Infrastructure also offers remote management/maintenance capabilities.

Towards a Distributed Process Execution Platform for Collaborative Networks

Enterprise collaboration typically occurs in the context of a process. Therefore, in order to support collaboration, there is a need to establish a framework able to handle a diversity of collaborative processes with different computational and communication requirements. This paper discusses the need for such framework, points out key requirements and proposes a strategy for a supporting technological infrastructure. Processes are seen as the central modeling entity in this framework. Portability of process definitions among different technological bindings is also a considered issue.

Secure Electronic Commerce in virtual enterprises of SMEs

The Electronic Commerce is being considered as the key to the success of the SME. In fact, the flexibility brought by last innovations in Information Technologies (IT) speedup the creation of a new generation of low cost IT based tools. However the need for a common understanding among the panoply of emergent and particular contributions associated to the need of a global and interoperable infrastructure have brought many application difficulties. Beyond those integration problems a secure and flexible communication framework is also a key to achieve such global infrastructure to support Electronic Commerce. Entrepreneurs condition the application of such innovations in front of clear guarantees of privacy, integrity and authenticity in addition to high quality trusted services.