Anna Lisa Guido

Evaluating potential benefits of the use of RFID, EPCglobal, and ebXML in the pharmaceutical supply chain

This paper attempts to evaluate the impact of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, EPCglobal and ebXML on some business processes that are critical to the success of the pharmaceutical supply chain. Particular attention is focused on the wholesaler because it represents a particular stress point in terms of constraints and product flow. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of some current (AS IS) supply chain processes was performed on a big pharmaceutical wholesaler. It allowed us to identify some critical factors in the main business processes. In order to guarantee an efficient item-level tracing system in the whole supply chain, a re-engineering procedure has been defined exploiting an approach based on the combined use of RFID, EPCglobal, and ebXML. The key performance indicator (KPI) method has been chosen to carry out the analysis of the potential benefits by using an empirical method based on the living laboratory approach. This rigorous experimental approach, performed in a controlled test environment, allowed us to derive a realistic estimate of the selected performance indicators for the reengineered (TO BE) model.

Collaborative Process Management for the Networked Enterprise: A Case Study

The ability to quickly identify and rapidly apply effective business practices makes the difference between companies that manage to remain competitive even in crisis situations and companies that suffer from short-term market changes. To seize the opportunity to adapt their business practices according to emerging organizational forms (Extended Enterprise, Virtual Enterprise) and to improve the workspace of knowledge workers who are central to an organizations success, however, companies are required to face several challenges. This paper presents a case study to support the activities of knowledge workers, increasing their productivity and their ability to find the information they need, and enabling collaboration with colleagues without changing their habits. The paper presents a set of design patterns useful in resolving emerging organizational issues. Also it briefly describes a software prototype that enables companies to introduce the business patterns in the networked workplace, integrating existing information management tools in an overall Enterprise 2.0 environment.

Supply Chain Management and Automatic Identification Management Convergence: Experiences in the Pharmaceutical Scenario

The need to implement and guarantee effective item-level tracing systems is becoming more and more important for a wide range of business applications, such as manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and anti-counterfeiting. Among these, the pharmaceutical supply chain, with millions of medicines moving around the world and needing to be traced at item level, represents a very interesting reference scenario. Furthermore, the growing counterfeiting problem raises a significant threat within the supply chain system. Recently, several international institutions (e.g. Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency, European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, GS1) are encouraging the use of innovative solutions in healthcare and in the pharmaceutical supply chain, to improve patient safety and enhance the efficiency of the pharmaceutical supply chain, with better worldwide drug traceability (FDA, 2004). Currently, the most popular auto-identification technology is optical one. Although the bar code (oneor bi-dimensional) is a very low cost solution, there are many valid reasons for not considering it as the primary auto-identification technique (Schroeter, 2008) in the near future. In fact, every kind of bar code technology requires line-of-sight (LoS), it cannot be written or read in bulk, it can be easily counterfeited, it can limit the speed of packaging line operations, etc. On the contrary, RFID (Finkenzeller, 2003) technology promises to optimize the critical processes in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems and to improve the patient safety, resolving problems of traditional optical auto-identification solutions. Passive RFID tags can be classified according to the frequency band used and the type of coupling between tag and reader antennas. The use of RFID solutions, in particular those working in Ultra High Frequency (UHF) band, could easily exceed the previous performance problems justifying the initial investment required by a process re-engineering of the pharmaceutical supply chain. Recent works (Uysal, 2008; De Blasi, 2010; Catarinucci, 2010) have highlighted that passive UHF RFID tags represent the more suitable solution for item-level tracing systems in a supply chain. Another fundamental element that is increasing exponentially the diffusion of the RFID in the automate logistics processes is the asserting of some international standards related to goods traceability, such as EPCglobal (Barchetti, 2009; Thiesse, 2009), GS1 (Global Standard 1) (Barchetti, 2010) and ebXML (Electronic Business using extensible Markup Language) (Barchetti, 2010), which are just a few interesting examples. The EPCglobal consortium,

Impact of RFID, EPC and B2B on traceability management of the pharmaceutical supply chain

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is becoming more and more important for tracing and tracking systems. Furthermore, the application of standards, such as EPCglobal, is contributing substantially to diffusing the important concept of Internet of Things. Although, these elements promise enormous benefits, there remain barriers that are limiting a large-scale deployment of these innovative technologies in supply chain management systems. An analysis of the main effects of the use of these technologies on the main processes of a supply chain is useful. This paper attempts to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) to trace the impacts of the combined use of different standards, such as RFID, EPCglobal, and ebXML, on a pharmaceutical supply chain. The current and possible future visions of the pharmaceutical supply chain are described through the AS-IS and TO-BE models. These models are used to perform a first KPI analysis; even if the reported results are still only partial they sketch out the main guidelines identifying the advantages obtainable by adopting an integrated system with B2B messaging and tracing and tracking capabilities in the pharmaceutical supply chain.

Business Process Design Meets Business Practices Through Enterprise Patterns: A Case Study

Every day companies deal with internal problems in order to manage human resources during the execution of business processes. The ability to quickly identify and rapidly apply effective business practices to recurring problems becomes crucial in order to improve the efficiency of the organization. To seize the opportunity of adapting their business practices to emerging organizational forms Extended Enterprise, Virtual Enterprise and to reuse the expertise of knowledge workers-who are central to an organizations success-companies are required to face several challenges. This paper presents a set of business patterns useful in resolving emerging organizational issues to support the activities of knowledge workers, increase their productivity and their ability to find the information they need, and enable collaboration with colleagues without changing their habits. Also it describes a real case study and a software system that allows companies to introduce these business patterns in the workplace, adopting an Enterprise 2.0 approach.

Information systems for knowledge workers: the kpeople enterprise 2.0 tool

Every day companies deal with internal problems to manage human resources during the execution of knowledge processes. In these situations, the ability to quickly identify and rapidly apply effective business practices for recurring problems becomes crucial in order to improve the efficiency of the organization. To address this problem, we demonstrate the Kpeople tool that enables organizations configuring a set of process patterns to codify business practices. Kpeople allows tracking unstructured knowledge, improving knowledge management and fostering collaboration.

Conceptual design of collaborative virtual environments for education using a theater-based metaphor

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) are becoming more and more important in many areas because they offer users the opportunity to experiment with novel interaction paradigms in order to perform collaborative work or have engaging experiences ‘being together’. One of the most promising application fields is eLearning, where CVEs give the unique opportunity to explore effective educational formats. Surprisingly, if compared with other more traditional fields as software engineering and database, we note a lack of design approaches. We point out that a well-founded design approach is crucial to develop collaborative experiences that could generate substantial and measurable educational benefits. To meet this challenge, in this paper we present a set of founding concepts that enable pedagogs and teachers designing effective 3D virtual worlds for education. To keep our concepts simply understandable, we based our design method on a widespread metaphor: the theater. We demonstrate through a real case study the promising advantages of our approach: expressiveness to capture collaborative features at a high level of abstraction, semi-formality to facilitate the establishment of a common ground between educational designers and CVEs engineers, and guidance to enable non-experts to cope with all the relevant aspects of a 3D virtual world.

Designing Complex Web Information Systems: Integrating Evolutionary Process Engineering

Corporations across the globe are increasingly considering the importance of user experience and business process design in creation of Web information systems. Designing Complex Web Information Systems: Integrating Evolutionary Process Engineering provides an overview of modern Web application technologies useful to business designers. Containing advanced findings from across the globe, this Premier Reference Source presents cutting-edge research on user experience design methodologies and the design of business processes.

E-learning Project Assessment Using Learners’ Topic in Social Media

A correct assessment of e-learning projects is a complex task because there are several aspects (such as contents, technologies, organizations etc.) that must be considered and many actors (learners, teachers, pedagogues, etc.) each one with specific requirements to be met. In recent years, in order to standardize the evaluation and to define the quality features of an e-learning project, several sets of factors (called Critical Success Factors) have been defined. The Critical Success Factors are focused on many aspects but, in our vision, they don’t consider properly the learners’ opinions. The learner is exactly the main e-learning project stakeholder. Thus, he/she could be considered at the centre of the e-learning system and his/her opinions must be carefully evaluated. In this paper, we describe our idea to support the analysis of the learners’ discussions posted on the web2.0 media (like forums, wikis, etc.) and to support the subsequent evaluation of the lacks and the benefits of e-learning projects.

Transforming Legacy Systems into User-Centred Web Applications

The web revolution makes outdated preexisting Information Systems (legacy systems). Companies need to update their Information Systems without lose neither investments on design and implementation made in the past nor the know-how acquired during years. The modern trend is to activate a reengineering process for the legacy systems. It is important that the reengineering process con-sider both technological aspect and definition of the Human Computer Interaction as important quality factors for the Information System transformation into a Web Information System. The process requires a methodological approach oriented to the application of a specific methodology for each reengineering phase. In this paper, we present a reengineering path that involves both technological and methodological aspects. The idea was born during the MIGR.O.S (MIGRation Open Source) project that aims to transform legacy systems into modern Web Information Systems.