Kary Främling

Intelligent Products: A survey

This paper presents an overview of the field of Intelligent Products. As Intelligent Products have many facets, this paper is mainly focused on the concept behind Intelligent Products, the technical foundations, and the achievable practical goals of Intelligent Products. A novel classification of Intelligent Products is introduced, which distinguishes between three orthogonal dimensions. Furthermore, the technical foundations in the areas of automatic identification and embedded processing, distributed information storage and processing, and agent-based systems are discussed, as well as the achievable practical goals in the contexts of manufacturing, supply chains, asset management, and product life cycle management.

Intelligent products: a step towards a more effective project delivery chain

International projects present really difficult logistics challenges. In international investment projects, a vast number of individualised deliveries has to be managed through a large supply network in a tight timeframe. This article investigates how the logistic challenges of international projects can be solved by utilising advanced web technologies and product identification. The paper presents a control system being built at Helsinki University of Technology, which is based on distributed programming, and wireless identification technologies. The aim of the system is to change the controlling mechanisms of project deliveries by giving the deliveries themselves the means with which to control their route. This enables the material flows in the project delivery chains to be controlled from the inside of the material flow itself.

Collaborative planning forecasting and replenishment: new solutions needed for mass collaboration

The challenge faced by supplier companies in the grocery supply chain for implementing collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR) is how to get the retailer to forecast, especially when it has not been necessary before. In this paper a solution that would allow collaboration on a wide scale is presented. The forecasting approach is called ``rank and share’’ and uses input from the retailer’s existing planning process ± the category management process. The benefit of using category management as the basis is that the retailer can scale up collaboration with a large number of suppliers without increasing planning resources. For the supplier the benefit is point of sales forecasts at the time of the assortment decision. To support this collaborative forecasting process there is a need for more robust replenishment solutions, new measures to illustrate benefits, and for a distributed planning architecture and software. Potential solutions for these are also discussed in the paper.

The product centric approach: a solution to supply network information management problems?

The management of single-item level information has grown to be one of the greatest challenges of supply network management. The main reasons for this are the increasing product customisation and increasingly complex supply networks. Product customisation adds to the quantity and specificity of product-related information. Current mainstream solutions, based on integrating product information databases, are not suitable for complex, short-term supply networks. This paper presents an approach and a proposed system for managing single-item level information. The approach we call product centric information management is based on centralising information to the individual products. The proposed system uses software agents, peer-to-peer information sharing, and a coding mechanism that utilises the domain names of the Internet. We also review applications of the system in tracking and logistics control.

Efficient tracking for short‐term multi‐company networks

Tracking of shipments is an important element of customer service in the transportation industry; and essential for logistics services as merge‐in‐transit. However, contemporary tracking systems are designed for use within a single company, and are thus invariably inadequate for multi‐company environments. The single company focus has led to a reduced span of monitoring and a diluted accessibility of information due to proprietary tracking codes and information architectures centred on the tracking service provider. This paper presents a novel forwarder‐independent approach for solving the difficulties of tracking in multi‐company supply networks. The research argues that the proposed tracking approach is superior to contemporary approaches for material flow tracking in short‐term multi‐company distribution networks.

Agent-based model for managing composite product information

The importance of product information management during the whole lifetime of the product has increased due to the technical sophistication of products as well as stricter governmental regulations for lifecycle management. Just sending the relevant product information downstream in the supply chain does not solve the challenges of product information management of complex products due to difficulties in updating the information and a risk of information overflow in the supply chain. This article describes an agent-based information management model that can be used for managing the information of complex products at a component level in a distributed manner. Further the paper presents an information management platform that can achieve information management requirements by using seven distinct messages.

Design patterns for managing product life cycle information

Agent-based architectures, taking queues from object-oriented programming, can make product information accessible in controlled ways over the Net.

Requirements on unique identifiers for managing product lifecycle information: comparison of alternative approaches

Managing product information for product items during their whole lifetime is challenging, especially during their usage and end-of-life phases. The main difficulty is to maintain a communication link between the product item and its associated information as the product item moves over organizational borders and between different users. As network access will typically not be continuous during the whole product-item lifecycle, it is necessary to embed at least a globally unique product identifier (GUPI) that makes it possible to identify the product item anytime during its lifecycle. A GUPI also has to provide a linking mechanism to product information that may be stored in backend systems of different organizations. GUPIs are thereby a cornerstone for enabling the Internet of Things, where ‘intelligent products’ can communicate over the Internet. In the current paper, we analyse and compare the three main currently known approaches for achieving such functionality, i.e. the EPC Network, DIALOG and WWAI.

Integrating material and information flows using a distributed peer-to-peer information system

The management of item-level information is one of the biggest challenges currently facing supply chain management. Managing product-related information grows ever more difficult because increasing product customisation adds to the amount and variety of product-related information, and increasingly complex supply networks complicate the integration of product information databases. A potential solution for the problems of item-level information management is moving to product centric information management, namely centralising the information to individual products and accessing the relevant information directly through them. This paper presents an approach and a system for managing item-level information. The system is based on software agents, peer-to-peer information, sharing, and a coding scheme that utilises the already allocated domain names of the Internet. Applications of the system to tracking and logistics control are reviewed.

Implementing Collaboration Process Networks

The promise of process integration between organizations too often is unfulfilled and new approaches are needed. Distributed control is a new and exciting opportunity to build more effective process networks for a wide range of applications in logistics and product development. A solution based on distributed control around the consumers of services in process networks is proposed. In logistics, it is the physical delivery that becomes the focus for distributed control when you approach the service environment from the consumer perspective. In collaborative design and manufacturing, it is the product model that becomes the focus of control. A consumer perspective provides key guidelines that help manufacturers and service providers identify the design of process networks that most efficiently add value in different industries and for different applications.