Ugo Barchetti

RFID, EPC and B2B convergence towards an item-level traceability in the pharmaceutical supply chain

The item-level tagging is one of the main challenges of many application scenarios. Among these, the pharmaceutical supply chain represents a very interesting case where the new auto-identification technologies, based on RFID and EPCglobal, will play a very import role. The authors present practical experiences gained from a recent research project on the item-level traceability in the pharmaceutical supply chain. Furthermore, a discussion on several areas of improvement opportunities for future large-scale deployments of these technologies is reported.

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.

MoWeT: A Configurable Framework to Support Ubiquitous Location-Aware Applications

Today, GPS enabled systems are extensively used for geographic navigation in almost all contexts (commercial, personal, etc.). The first limit of these systems is their incapacity to work in covered areas, alley streets and, obviously, inside buildings. Furthermore commercial GPS applications are not enough customizable, only allowing user to add a set of POIs (Points Of Interest) without any capability of adding user defined behaviors. Recently, other kind of technologies, such as RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) and Bluetooth, are being used to develop location based applications, like context aware services usable in indoor environment. In this paper we present a hybrid system called MoWeT that make use of both GPS and RFID technology and that is fully customizable in regard of contents, events, user interactions. MoWeT allows also, users involved in the same work session, to interact each other through their mobile devices, making use of a central communication server, but also with users connected to the same session, but with a 3D view, with their workstations (mixed reality).In this paper we focus on the usage as enhanced personal tourist guidance with mobile connectivity.

A Framework to Generate 3D Learning Experience

A Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) is a computer-based virtual space that supports collaborative work and social interplay. In a 3D CVE, a ‘hosting’ 3D world is the necessary ingredient: within it users provided with graphical embodiments called avatars that convey their identity (presence, location, movement etc.), can meet and interact with other users, with agents or with virtual objects. Even if graphics hardware and 3D technologies are rapidly evolving and the increased Internet connection speed allows the sharing of amounts of data and information among geographically distributed users, the development of networked three-dimensional applications is still complicated and requires expert knowledge. Although some collaborative 3D Web technologies and applications have already been developed, most of them are particularly concerned with offering a high level realistic representation of the virtual world since increasing the level of detail increases the sense of ‘virtual presence’ in the 3D world. However, these developments have not, at the same time supported a high level, non-expert authoring process and the concepts of programming flexibility and component re-use have rarely been taken into account. In this introduction, we discuss our research experience in the field of Collaborative Virtual Environments. We will outline our approach which has been based on both multi-channel integration and on high performances issues. Moreover, we advocate the need for a drastic simplification of authoring and personalisation phases. We propose this should be enacted through formal description of the sets of interactions, as well as of their behavioural features and rules, that we together call ‘collaborative metaphors’. This should be done in a component oriented fashion to drive collaboration among users according to the designer’s specifications. As result of previous considerations, we present OpenWebTalk (OWT), a declarative 3D component framework based on XML documents describing not only the formal structure of the environment of the virtual world, where the action takes place, but also the complex set of interaction rules that govern interactions between users and world objects used to stimulate certain kinds of collaboration. Such a framework would thus effectively help fast prototyping and an easy building up of collaborative applications. The OWT framework also provides a high 27

A conceptual framework for business driven integration

The interoperability among companies and the Business to Business (B2B) message exchange are key aspects for the growth of the business: companies can efficiently interact each other over the web and so can improve its own business capability. The use of the B2B messages modify the way of operate of a company and, of course, the internal business process. The problems that may arise in the B2B message exchange are of two types: one is more methodological, aimed at choosing guidelines oriented to the integration between the business process and the definition of business messages; the other is more technological, aimed at choosing an infrastructural solution more suitable for development of message exchange. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework to solve the two types of problem. The conceptual framework wants to help companies to define a proper B2B system for message exchange through a business integration solution. It is based on three layers (conceptual, logical and technological) and it covers two separate aspects (methodological and technological) and uses the semantic web idea to link together the three different layers.