Michael Glöckner

Metamodel of a Logistics Service Map

With the principle of division of labor in logistics, an integrator can focus on planning and monitoring within a network, while subsidiary logistics service providers (LSPs) are responsible for the actual physical manipulation of goods. Because of heterogeneous service descriptions, processes and IT-systems, the integrator requires a platform that provides the ability to interact with LSPs and to plan, execute and monitor contracts for integrator’s customers. Such an integration platform is currently developed in the research project Logistics Service Engineering & Management. Crucial to such a platform is the ability to maintain a complete catalog and to efficiently identify and choose appropriate services. In this paper a metamodel-based approach is presented facing these requirements.

Go with the Flow - Design of Cloud Logistics Service Blueprints

By adopting principles of cloud computing to the logistics domain the paradigm of Cloud Logistics is derived. It appears to be a promising paradigm in order to evolve logistics into being more flexible and collaborative. Yet, appropriate concepts that enable the cloud logistics paradigm are missing. In the paper, existing body of literature is reviewed and a definition and a framework of cloud logistics is given. Further, service blueprinting is combined with domain engineering and general morphological analysis in order to create a suitable method for designing cloud oriented service blueprints. Those are focusing on domain-specific flows and transformations enabling cloud oriented business collaboration. The method is applied to the logistics domain and a cloud logistics service blueprint is designed. Finally, the concept is evaluated with real use cases from logistics service providers. Keywords-Logistics, Service, Blueprinting, Cloud Logistics, Resource Virtualization, Service Encapsulation I. MOTIVATION AND METHODOLOGY For years, logistics is facing the trends of outsourcing and concentration on core competencies [1], [2]. In order to fulfill complex customer demands in such an environment of specialized logistics service providers (LSP), selection of and collaboration between them is obligatory. For the selection of LSP, flexibility in terms of ability of adaption to changing customer requirements, responsiveness to target market, handling of specific requirements and time response capability is an important evaluation criteria [2], [3], [4]. Flexibility and performance of logistics services can be increased [5] by the adoption of a service oriented paradigm [6], [7], which is also the foundation for the principles of cloud computing (CC) (’...-as-a-Service’) [8], [9]. This comprises on the one hand encapsulation, composability, loose coupling, and reusability (adapted from service orientation) and on the other hand virtualization of resources, ad-hoc reconfiguration and inter-connectability of resources (adapted from CC). The adoption of those principles to the logistics domain to the most possible extent leads to the idea of Cloud Logistics (CL) as discussed in [10]. Its core idea is the virtualization of both IT and physical logistics resources and their encapsulation in logistics services in order to provide flexible and customized logistics solutions. It is pointed out, CL is still a topic in its infancy, just existing as an theoretical concept and potential fields of further research are discussed [10]. The most promising field is a comprehensive service model based on logistics resources and ensuring compatibility through coherent (data) interfaces, which is crucial in order to combine services and resources of different LSP. This conforms to the results of Gupta et al. [11] and Arnold et al. [12]. They found simple communication between stakeholders, ease of use and convenience (which are enabled through comprehensive models and compatibility) to be the topmost success factor of CC ([11] for small and medium enterprises in general and [12] for logistics enterprises in particular). Hence, those factors are assumed to enable the success of CL as well. Ease of use through compatibility and a comprehensive model can be provided by a modular construction kit [13] that is based on generic compatible building blocks that represents the comprehensive service model. Thus, the idea of Cloud Logistics Service Blueprints (CLSB) arises that can be configured and specified to virtualize and represent the various logistics services in a network and their resources. By virtualizing and encapsulating with the help of the same CLSB, compatibility of services and their resources is granted and CL is enabled. Eventually, the engineering of such a blueprint is a challenging task that answers the leading research question: ’How can the logistics domain and its essential resources be analyzed, described, abstracted and categorized in order to create a logisticsed and categorized in order to create a logistics service blueprint that enables cloud logistics?’ that is solved with the following sub-questions: • SQ1: What is the leading definition of cloud logistics? • SQ2: What are suitable service engineering methods for creating cloud oriented service blueprints? • SQ3: What is an appropriate conceptualization of the logistics domain (description, flows, interfaces, transformations) in order to develop Cloud Logistics Service Blueprints for enabling cloud logistics? As CL is a theoretical concept [10], an empirical observation is not possible. Hence, the design-science paradigm for information systems [14] is chosen and the design-oriented information systems research approach [15] is applied as the leading methodological framework. Its phases of analysis, design, evaluation and diffusion shape the structure of the paper by using specific methods, see Figure 1. The analysis is conducted in section II with a systematic literature review 5058 Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences | 2017 URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/41776 ISBN: 978-0-9981331-0-2

Privacy preserving BPMS for collaborative BPaaS

Collaboration in business environments is an ongoing trend that is enabled by and based on cloud computing. It supports flexible and ad-hoc reconfiguration and integration of different services, which are provided and used via the internet, and implemented within business processes. This is an important competitive advantage for the participating stakeholders. However, trust, policy compliance, and data privacy are emerging issues that result from the distributed data handling in cloud-based business processes. Up to now, several architectures and technical systems that enable the cloud-based collaboration within business processes have been developed, but the selection of an appropriate business process management system (BPMS) is missing. An implemented BPMS has to meet certain requirements that result from the cloud-based characteristics and from the other implemented systems. This paper derives requirements for BPMSs in cloud-based environments, currently available BPMSs are evaluated against the derived requirements and the selected one is implemented subsequently.

Secure service interaction for collaborative business processes in the inter-cloud

The emergence of a closer relationship between cloud service providers in the cloud computing market is the inevitable consequence of the computing as utility concept. The closer cooperation creates competitive advantages for providers and users of cloud services as well. Capacities and services can be used in a collaborative and flexible way. Despite the numerous potentials of composite cloud services, trust, policy and privacy are the major challenges resulting from the distributed and flexible data handling. The paper derives requirements and solutions in the field of inter-cloud service communication with a special focus on security. The proposed architecture is evaluated with a sample collaborative business process of inter-cloud service interaction.

Ontological structuring of logistics services

The paradigm of cloud logistics is essentially built upon the virtualization of logistics resources from different logistics service providers. The virtualized resources are pooled and can subsequently be combined and encapsulated within customer-specific modular logistics services. The pooling within bigger logistics networks leads to a high quantity of different available logistics resources and services. Domain-specific structuring with the concept of the logistics service map helps to retrieve specific requested services from that quantity. The structuring of resources and services is a challenging task based on the semantic gap of differing wordings, descriptions used by different providers. The developed ontology design pattern for domain-specific structuring of logistics services can help to close the semantic gap as well as to enable the concept of the logistics service map. Structuring data and information (of services) from different providers can be made available, linked and interchanged easily within the network. Digitalized collaboration is supported and the disruptive paradigm of cloud logistics is enabled.

Logistics Service Map Prototype

Concentration on core competencies in logistics requires collaboration between logistics service providers in order to fulfill complex customer demands. The increasing demand for flexibility in logistics is facing the heterogeneity of the providers. This creates a challenging field for planning complex supply chains. Logistics integrators are meeting this challenge. One main issue is the retrieval of the services available in the logistics network and their combination for planning complex supply chains. The prototype presented in this paper supports the retrieval by providing a customizable domain-specific dimension concept for structuring services. With the help of the dimensions and a customizable domain-specific template scheme, a dynamic matrix is created in order to facilitate the retrieval of services matching the selected dimensions. After retrieval, the services can be combined on a canvas via drag and drop in order to plan complex services and simultaneously create both their BPMN diagram and corresponding XML file.

Automation of Privacy Preserving BPMS in Collaborative Cloud-Based Business Processes

Collaboration in business environments is an ongoing trend that is enabled by and based on cloud computing. It supports flexible and ad-hoc reconfiguration and integration of different services, which are provided and used via the internet, and implemented within business processes. This is an important competitive advantage for the participating stakeholders. However, trust, policy compliance, and data privacy are emerging issues that result from the distributed data handling in cloud-based business processes. In an earlier paper, we have discussed the requirements that a Business Process Management System (BPMS) should meet in order to enable privacy preserving business process as a service. This paper presents the necessary steps for implementing such a BPMS for an architecture to enable management of privacy-preserving collaborative business process.

Foundation for Modular Cloud Logistics.

Logistics service providers are facing the need to collaborate because of ongoing trends like outsourcing and concentration on core competencies. The paradigm of cloud logistics promises to make collaboration in the logistics domain more easy and more flexible by adopting the principles of cloud computing to the logistics domain. To ensure the success of cloud computing to the paradigm of cloud logistics as well, standards have to be developed. With the help of the service blueprinting method, a basic logistics module is developed in order to lay a foundation for cloud logistics.

A Reference Architecture for the Logistics Service Map: Structuring and Composing Logistics Services in Logistics Networks

Collaborating logistics networks consist of a multitude of participants with differing systems and service description standards that are to be brought together to fulfill complex logistics services. To facilitate planning, in terms of retrieving services from subsidiary LSPs and combining them to complex composite logistics services, a logistics integrator (e.g. 4th Party Logistics Service Provider (4PL) or Lead Logistics Provider (LLP)) depends on a system that provides those functions in an integrated manner and that is capable of handling the variety of the network. The concept of the Logistics Service Map covers those requirements, but the inherent complexity and the lack in IT-know-how in smaller enterprises induces the need for developing a reference architecture to evaluate and design concrete architectures for structuring and composing logistics services. The paper develops a reference architecture for this concept with requirements from logistics use cases and evaluates it with the TARA method.

Evaluation of User Specific Privacy Policy Architecture for Collaborative BPaaS on the Example of Logistics

Nowadays, collaboration between multiple companies along the supply chain is one of the key factors for ensuring sustainable success. Although this fact is known by almost all companies the actual collaboration is quite low because of the fear of losing sensitive and critical data to competitors. To solve this problem an architecture for modeling and execution of privacy preserved business processes and a privacy modeling approach have been developed. This paper evaluates both artifacts. The used method is framework for evaluation in design science (FEDS).