Business perspectives on Ubiquitous Computing

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M-Lab – The Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Lab

Elgar Fleisch M-Lab Working Paper No. 4

Business perspectives on Ubiquitous Computing

Version 1.0 30.11.01

Abstract The goal of this paper is to establish what kind of business impacts companies can expect from applying ubiquitous computing technologies to their services, products and processes. The paper concentrates on business applications and thus omits the more intensely studied domains of home, office and classroom automation. It derives its answers Prof. Dr. E. Fleisch is a Research Director of Mon the basis of existing business applications and a Lab and Vice-Director of more theoretical discussion of data integration asthe Institute of Information pects. As a result, it proposes that first, ubiquitous Management at the Unicomputing enables the consistent integration of the versity of St. Gallen real and the virtual worlds, and thus has the potenContact tial to eliminate very costly media breaks. Second, Institute of Information it may eventually allow for a much more compreManagement hensive depth of integration, which in turn might University of St. Gallen Müller-Friedbergstrasse 8 open the door to the control of complex systems. CH-9000 St. Gallen The paper concludes with a list of expected busiSwitzerland ness benefits and envisions a development path for future business applications. However, it also makes clear that there remain a whole series of tough and unresolved issues, ranging from technical infrastructure to social and ethical impacts.

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Table of contents Table of contents .......................................................................................... ii 1

2

3

4

Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 1.1

Motivation for writing this paper ................................................ 1

1.2

Research question....................................................................... 2

1.3

Research approach ..................................................................... 2

State of the art ......................................................................................... 3 2.1

What is UbiComp......................................................................... 3

2.2

Related theoretical frameworks.................................................. 4

2.3

Existing UbiComp business applications .................................. 5

Theoretical perspective: UbiComp & data integration ......................... 7 3.1

Integration of the real and virtual world..................................... 7

3.2

Integration range and integration depth .................................. 11

Practical Perspective: Business process changes............................. 13 4.1

Data integration effect............................................................... 13

4.2

Business benefits...................................................................... 15

5

Summary and outlook........................................................................... 17

6

Bibliography .......................................................................................... 20

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1 Introduction 1.1 Motivation for writing this paper In recent years, researchers have investigated the best ways of linking computers via the Internet, people via mobile phones, people and computers via browsers, business processes via e-commerce tools, and entire companies via service level agreements. They have collected business cases and studied impacts of Business Networking on customer retention, services, products, business processes, human resources, organizational structures, software, standards, etc. [Wigand/Picot/Reichwald 1997], [Österle/Fleisch/Alt 2001]. With the growing maturity of the field of Ubiquitous Computing (“UbiComp”) it soon became clear that Business Networking might extend its scope beyond computers, processes and companies to network physical things, e.g. product and means of production [Gershenfeld 2000], [Kelly 1998], [Mattern 2001], [Norman 1998]. Thus, UbiComp might eventually advance from the purely technical discipline it has been so far, to an applied discipline where it becomes essential to analyze its business implications. This is precisely the goal of this paper, which aims to shed some light on the business perspectives on UbiComp. It therefore concentrates on business applications of UbiComp, and leaves out the rather well published but more technically oriented applications we find nowadays in the areas of office, home and classroom automation [Abowd et al. 2001]. Therefore, this article is more an introductory paper to an emerging sub-discipline of e-business – applied ubiquitous computing or u-commerce [McCarthy 2001].

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1.2 Research question The most important question this paper aims to answer is: What kind of business impacts can companies expect from applying UbiComp to their services, products and processes? This leads to more unanswered questions: Does UbiComp pursue a specific business goal? Are there any significant differences between these business impacts and those caused by other information systems, such as e-commerce, supply chain management or enterprise resource planning systems? Can we derive any principles for designing applied UbiComp? Does applied UbiComp merit further research? If so, what are the more detailed research questions?

1.3 Research approach In order to answer these questions, this paper looks at applied UbiComp from three different angles. First, it discusses the most important principles of UbiComp. Second, it looks at existing theoretical approaches, which might be helpful in deriving and/or explaining the business impact of UbiComp. Third, it investigates a set of real life cases of business applications of ubiquitous computing. Based on these three sets of data, the remainder of the article shows how to derive the basic mechanics of applied UbiComp, the potential impact of UbiComp on business processes, and ends with some applied UbiComp building blocks that help guide us through the major open research questions.

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2 State of the art The goal of this section is to provide an introduction to the state-of-the-art in UbiComp from a theoretical and practical point of view. The theoretical view is limited to the presentation of a detailed definition of UbiComp, and a listing of possible theoretical frameworks for studying the business impacts of UbiComp. The practical view shows some current business applications that utilize UbiComp technologies.

2.1 What is UbiComp In order to investigate the business perspectives of UbiComp, it is necessary to break down and define the term UbiComp, and to understand what elements constitute UbiComp (i.e. for the purpose of selecting the appropriate cases to be studied). Unfortunately, there is no such widely agreed upon definition available. The first definition of UbiComp was put together by Mark Weiser, the founder of this very discipline: “Ubiquitous Computing is the method of enhancing computer use by making many computers available throughout the physical environment, but making them effectively invisible to the user.” [Weiser 1991]. In Langheinrich (2001), some members of the UbiComp community tried to sharpen his definition and agreed on the following most important elements of UbiComp: -

1

First, UbiComp always deals with non-traditional computing devices, such as very small or even invisible computers, which merge seamlessly into the physical environment. These new computing devices are sometimes not easily distinguishable from the real world, and therefore referred to as hybrid things, smart things, smartifacts or digital artifacts.1

However, the term “non-traditional computing device” does not seem to be very sustainable since it is bound by what the community agrees to classify as traditional. In a few years from now an intelligent medicine bottle may be referred to as traditional.

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Second, UbiComp applications always involve a very high number of these non-traditional computers. Since these intelligent devices are networked with one another, the high number of network nodes and edges (meaning dependencies) might eventually lead to the emergence of a device swarm behaviour.

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Third, the new computing devices are usually equipped with a selection of different sensors to collect data from their environment. Here, the goal is to create context awareness, which allows intelligent things to decide and act on a decentralized basis.

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Fourth, most of the new computing devices are mobile and the tasks they are programmed to perform depend on the geographical location, as well as the neighborhood of other devices. Since most of the mobile devices cannot be required to form a fixed part of an UbiComp application, UbiComp systems need to support spontaneous networking, in other words the ad hoc detection and linking of mobile devices into a temporary network.

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Fifth, the large number and the often-invisible interfaces of smart things require new forms of interactions between humans and computer. Tennenhouse [2001] suggests implicit interactions where humans are out of the computing loop, which eliminates user distractions.

In this paper, we base our case selection and thus the derivation of arguments on the above definition.

2.2 Related theoretical frameworks The field of analyzing the business impacts of information technologies is over 30 years old. However, neither the English-speaking community, with its research field “Information Systems Management”, nor the German-speaking community, with its “Wirtschaftsinformatik”, has come up with their own theories for describing or explaining the business perspectives on information systems. Most of the work is based on theoretical insights into economics, organizations, and computer science. The same holds true for this investigation: the theoretical framework for this work will be delivered by a set of ideas from © M-Lab

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the fields integrated information systems [Scheer 1991], business process redesign [Davenport 1993], and business networking [Österle/Fleisch/Alt 2001].

2.3 Existing UbiComp business applications The empirical evidence for this paper comes from two main sources: an indepth case of a company called CHIP (name changed), and a number of short cases we collected via the Internet, expert interviews, and various literature over the last few months. In the case of CHIP we accompanied the design and prototyping of an UbiComp application in the area of shop floor management over a period of six months. CHIP is a global manufacturer of microprocessors whose production facilities – driven by its dynamic output market – developed according to a pronounced organic pattern. On the one hand, decreasing innovation cycles and increasing demand for complex and customized products in the course of time led to complex and difficult-to-track production logistics within the individual production plants. Ever growing international competition, on the other hand, caused attainable profits and mark-ups to dwindle while cycle time and punctual delivery gained greater weight in the case of both standard and rush orders. The organic growth pattern resulted in the following production process: CHIP groups the production lots in transport containers that are transferred by the operators from one production machine to the next. The reference framework of the production setup is as follows: (a) Each lot determines its own sequence of operation. (b) Each operation can be performed on any of several production machines. (c) Some of the production machines are designed to perform several operations. (d) There are standard and rush orders. (e) The production machines are located in different areas, stories, and buildings. The problem CHIP was having was not necessarily in establishing a timeoptimized production plan, but rather in gathering operating data – mimicking shop floor reality in the production planning and control system (PPC system). The best PPC system will be of no use if it fails to receive information on which lot is on which production machine or at which storage location. CHIP tried to overcome this problem by introducing bar codes on the wafer boxes. © M-Lab

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Experience has shown, however, that there is nothing that can be done to rule out operator errors in scanning the bar codes (i.e. smudged bar codes, inattentive operators). The inevitable consequences are that lots cannot be traced, there are long cycle times, and problems occur in meeting delivery schedules, especially where rush orders are concerned. After CHIP realized that the success of the bar code solution, which primarily addressed organizational aspects, was limited, CHIP started to look for a solution that would permit the fully automated integration of the real world with the information world – in this case, with the PPC system. In a field test it fitted the wafer boxes with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips capable of gathering information and communicating wirelessly across several meters with machines, storage locations, doors, aisles, and operators who themselves were equipped with fixed or mobile RFID transmitter stations. The operators were also provided with mobile phones. The result was a network of hundreds of “smart” wafers, machines, storage locations, doors, and aisles, linked via RFID, Ethernet-LAN and mobile phone protocols to the PPC system and the operators. This was designed to provide two services: first, it could tell any operator at any location within the facility at any point in time the exact real world position of a demanded wafer. Second, wafers could become aware goods. This is where the system can automatically detect a wafer that is behind production schedule (e.g. the wafer has not been relocated for more the 24 hours), and send a notification message to the operator’s mobile phone using the short message service (“SMS”) of a local telecom provider. The pilot installation at CHIP provided evidence of the following business benefits: (a) reduced cycle times, especially for rush orders, (b) reduction of lost wafers, (c) reduction of jobs in operative production logistics, and (d) increased planning abilities, and consequently, reliability resulting in enhanced customer satisfaction and increased competitiveness. The roll-out of the pilot to the entire facility is currently in the planning phase.

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3 Theoretical perspective: UbiComp & data integration From the theories in respect of information systems we learned that data integration is a major source for providing business benefits by avoiding media breaks. Media breaks occur when business processes require humans to transfer data from one medium, e.g. a bar code, to another, e.g. a PPC system. Preventing media breaks is the key to automating business processes, which is considered to be the main goal of the field management information systems. This might hold true since automation is the basis of two major ITrelated business benefits: first, it speeds up processes by reducing the dependency on humans who can only process information sequentially but not in parallel. Automation also reduces processing error rates which are, at least when applied to standard tasks, much lower for computers than for humans. Second, automation allows a new quality of processes. Most of all it enables management with a much finer granularity, e.g. one-to-one marketing instead of mass marketing, production lot one (“1”) instead of mass production, and customer-individual products or services versus one size fits all. The following two sections discuss the contribution of UbiComp to the avoidance of media breaks.

3.1 Integration of the real and virtual world New computing devices, such as smart things, automate data input. This prevents media breaks and leads to new intra-company and inter-company processes. Until now, researchers and practitioners have focused primarily on the networking of companies, processes, information systems, and people, and avoiding media breaks has been considered the key to enhancing efficiency in networks. A frequently cited example of a media break is the multiple entry of an order in different company information systems within a value chain. A media break is also comparable to a missing link in an information chain, and contributes to the slowness, lack of transparency, error proneness, etc. of intra- and inter-company processes.

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UbiComp addresses what is currently one of the biggest problems in information processing: the media break at data input. UbiComp’s goal is to network the physical world (people, products, equipment, etc.) with the information systems world (e.g. enterprise resource planning (ERP), electronic commerce (EC) and supply chain planning (SCP) systems, as well as local, regional and global information networks), in a near-concurrent and cost-effective manner. Thereby, UbiComp aims to bridge the gap between the physical company reality and its information-technological representation [Boriello/Want 2000] (see Figure 1). This will only be successful though, when people are no longer needed as a mediator between the physical and information worlds, i.e. when physical resources communicate automatically with the computer networks (or amongst one another), without human intervention. This is not yet possible however, with the technologies that are used in industrial practice to network physical resources with information systems, such as entering data manually via the keyboard, voice inputting, or scanning of bar codes. A conceivable line of development is suggested by current developments in the area of passive and active tags based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. They will lead to new scenarios in which companies animate their physical fixed and current assets, such as CHIP’s wafers, for example, which provide them with intelligence, and tie up these smart things automatically with internal and external information systems.

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Active tags

Passive tags

Bare code scanning

Speech recognition

Manual data entry

M-Lab – The Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Lab

Virtual world • inter and cross-company information systems (e.g. ERP systems) • Local, regional and global communication networks (e.g.. Internet)

Gap between physical and digital world Cost of data entry

Real world • Human beings • Products • Production means

Human intervention required

No human intervention required Time

Figure 1: UbiComp avoids media breaks2

UbiComp can therefore be seen as the next logical step in the integration of business-relevant objects. Here the main goal is not to integrate data about the real world that is stored in different databases or other media. The main goal is to integrate data, which is directly linked to and sometimes not even distinguishable from the physical world, with data in the virtual world. Figure 2 distinguishes three types of integration challenges. The first challenge is to integrate electronic information, such as internal accounting vouchers, an external EDI, or payment messages. On a syntax level, this can at least be achieved today by information systems such as ERP, EDI and SCM systems. The second challenge is the integration of paper-based information. Companies may use scanners to transfer the data from paper to the database of a document management or an archiving system, and then route the docu-

2

Developed jointly with Intellion AG.

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ments electronically through the enterprise. If a business partner needs a paper-based document later on, the electronic documents can simply be printed and mailed. The third challenge is the integration of the physical world and the digital world. As in the case of CHIP, UbiComp technologies could help to provide the digital world (e.g. the PPS, SCM or ERP systems) with the measurable status of the real world in real time. Since three-dimensional things, such as products or means of transportation, cannot be turned into data, or at least not as easily as paper-based documents, one could imagine that this integration challenge might be softened by attaching a non-traditional computing device to each physical thing. These devices would turn things into smart things in order to enhance the physical world, for example by avoiding media breaks between a product and its corresponding data record in the PPS system.

Innovation

Supply Chain Management

Customer Relationship Management

1. EDI Enterprise Information Systems 2. Letter

3. Product

1. Integration of electronic information / ERP, EDI 2. Integration of paper based information / DocMgmt 3. Integration of physical world / UbiComp?

Figure 2: UbiComp softens the real world

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3.2 Integration range and integration depth UbiComp enables data to be distributed to the point where data can be used or generated. This may, for instance, be a local smart thing, a local group of smart things, or a global information system. This is based on the insights provided, for example, by Kelly [Kelly 1998], who postulated: “Numerous small things connected together into a network generate tremendous power. But this swarm power will need some kind of minimal governance for the top to maximize its usefulness. [...] With the invention of a few distributed systems, such as the Internet, we have merely probed the potential of what minimally centralized networks can do…” If the bold rule of “distribute being” or “control from bottom-up” [Kelly 1995] should stand the test of UbiComp reality, smart things will open a new door for the control of complex systems. Figure 3 shows how the capability afforded by UbiComp, to cope with complexity, may influence in-company information processing. At present, the cost-intensive mainframe and client-server architectures, coupled with the media break at data input, only permit near-concurrent mapping of the few scarce, and consequently expensive, resources (A-resources) in the internal information systems at reasonable costs. Mapping the cheap and plentiful resources (C-resources) is not economically feasible at this stage. The rising cost pressure in the market increasingly calls for pinpoint, and consequently, information-system-supported management of B and C-resources into the bargain, such as the transport containers at CHIP or the automobile value chain. Any missed or wrongly filled transport containers are liable to cause extremely costly interruptions in production. UbiComp points a way to extending the integration depth to the level of B and C-resources without causing a cost explosion. Developments in the next few years will show whether or not this UbiComp path correctly describes in-company reality. UbiComp and e-business are not mutually exclusive, nor is one a clear sequel to the other – they overlap. Whereas UbiComp aims to extend the integration depth of in-company information processing, the e-Business path describes the extension of the integration range to include organizational units. Ebusiness systems, such as e-procurement systems, e-commerce systems, portals, or electronic marketplaces, integrate individual processes across © M-Lab

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company boundaries – their integration range covering the company network with its open-loop or closed-loop processes. UbiComp may be looked upon as a separate path or as a new building block of e-business, where both paths are Internet-based and their solutions have to be closely matched up, implemented and refined.

Integration range Departement

Company

Network

Mixed path of enterprise automation

E-Business path

Island solutions

ERP systems

Ubiquitous computingpath

B resources

Smart things

A resources

Integration depth

C resources

Function

E-Business systems

Smart devices

PC Client/server

Mainframe

Information technology

Figure 3: Integration range versus Integration depth

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4 Practical Perspective: Business process changes From the case discussions we gained an initial idea of the new functions companies may have on hand when applying UbiComp, such as context-aware products and means of production. The discussion of UbiComp, from a data integration point of view, showed that UbiComp provides a special form of integration: the integration of the real with the virtual world. This section aims to derive business process impacts from both the cases and the more theoretical discussion of integration.

4.1 Data integration effect As in the areas of ERP and e-Business systems, data integration also leads to real time data collection of more data with superior quality in the area of UbiComp systems, and thus allows for faster and better business decisions (see Figure 4). In order to discuss this rather general statement in more detail let us look at the management of a cool chain, specifically that of Sainsbury’s. Applying UbiComp technologies to track the cool boxes and measure the temperature may enhance the quality of the data collected quite dramatically, for the following main reasons: -

Instead of measuring the temperature at only three points in the supply chain (goods issued at production, goods received at warehouse, goods received at retail store), and in only a small sample of all boxes, every cool box could be equipped with a smart device, including a temperature sensor that permanently records the temperature. The number of measuring points would increase with the number of boxes to be monitored, as well as the number of measurements taken per sensor and hour.

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New sensor technology could provide multidimensional sensor data such as temperature, acceleration and pressure and thus a richer data stream on which to base decisions.

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The measurements can be taken at any place and at any time. Since they are digitized immediately they can also be communicated whenever there is a network connection to a local or global managing host system. They can then be automatically translated into actions, such as sending a notification to an operator requesting a check of the cooling system, because the temperature has been constantly rising for the last hour.

The automatic and distributed collection and communication of data via UbiComp systems serve as a basis for rapid centralized (central logistic system) and decentralized (onboard system in truck) decision-making.

Time • immediate digitalization allows immediate processing • location independent immediate integration and distribution of information • ... translates to fast centralized as well as decentralized decision-making

Information and decision generation

Costs: automation leads to low • measurement costs • low information processing costs • low information integration costs • helps to avoid human errors

Quality • more measuring points on object and time axis • higher precision in measuring • mobility • immediate digitalization reduces errors • ... translates to more and precise basis for decisions

Figure 4: Data Integration effect of UbiComp

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4.2 Business benefits The analysis of the cases shows that the integration of the real and the virtual world by means of UbiComp systems has the potential to enable various costsaving and revenue-generating benefits. The revenue-generating benefits include: -

Source verification. UbiComp can help to keep track of the history of a single product instance in a very easy-to-maintain and cost-efficient way. It enables authorized customers, dealers, producers, or disposal engineers to reconstruct and check the product life cycle, learn from its data, and prove the product’s roots at any time and place. The trust generated by source verification may lead to rising sales.

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Counterfeit protection. UbiComp allows each product instance to have its unequivocal web presence and thus opens up new avenues for counterfeit protection. The number of counterfeit products declines, and sales of the original products rise.

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New services. UbiComp enables the distributed collection and computing of data and thus opens doors to new value-added services, which are also clearable, such as alert services in the medical area.

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Innovative/smart products. To achieve a competitive advantage, producers may use UbiComp technologies to advance their classical products to new hybrid or smart products. One example of a smart product is a smart car tire, which sends the driver a message when its pressure lowers.

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One-to-one marketing. Smart products are a cost-efficient way to enhance customer retention by managing each customer relationship individually. Maintaining customer retention is a very effective way to grow revenue.

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Mass customization. If constructions composed of bits are easier to change than those composed of atoms, the advancement of classical

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products to hybrid products is a cost-efficient way of accomplishing mass customization. The cost-saving benefits include: -

Maintenance and repair. Cost-efficient and worldwide unequivocal identification (age, version, material, etc.) of a product can be maintained or repaired in real time. Also, there is easy access to special maintenance and repair information, such as instructions or debugging software.

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Theft and shrinkage. RFID tags may serve as protection against theft and shrinkage, for example in supermarkets or warehouses.

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Call-backs. Product identification and product history are the basis for (cost-efficient) call-backs.

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Safety, liability, and warranty. Product identification and product history are key in the implementation of safety, liability, and warranty provisions regulated by law, such as the rules of the Food and Drug Administration for medical devices, implants, genetically modified materials, etc.

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Surveillance. UbiComp enables low cost surveillance of means of production, people and animals.

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Process and inventory costs. UbiComp enables new processes, such as checkout or inventory management in retail business, and thus lowers process and inventory costs.

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Disposal and recycling. UbiComp reduces the costs of compliance with green content laws.

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5 Summary and outlook By applying UbiComp technologies to their products and processes, companies can expect a tighter integration of their real world (people, products, means of production) with their virtual world (ERP system, the Internet, etc). UbiComp would seem to constitute a logical next step along the data integration path created by other tools, such as ERP and e-Business systems, and thus provides the same basic business benefits. However, from a slightly different angle, UbiComp focuses on the avoidance of media breaks between things in the real world and the virtual proxies of those things. The seamless integration for example, of products and their records (not necessarily visible to individuals) on some enterprise databases or even homepages on the Internet, enables a new quality level in the automatic collection and analysis of data describing the context of a product. And, it is precisely this new quality level that may now, for the first time, allow for the benefits and cost-efficient solutions outlined in detail in Section 4.2. The following are important lessons learned derived from this research: -

UbiComp solutions have the potential to bring about sustainable changes in business processes. They are aimed at reducing process costs and business risks, and consequently enhancing sales and business opportunities. The starting point in designing UbiComp solutions is the user problem.

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UbiComp automates data input, and in doing so reduces media breaks. Just like ERP systems (internal integration) and e-business systems (inter-company integration) before it, UbiComp may initiate a new wave of business process redesign by increasing integration depth.

-

UbiComp solutions distribute data gathering and data processing to the points where data are generated or decisions are made, and consequently have the potential to provide efficient solutions to problems with a high degree of complexity. The design of data and function distribution is an integral part of an UbiComp architecture.

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UbiComp solutions integrate numerous heterogeneous system elements. They integrate smart things, classical in-company information systems and electronic services via local and global, and hence mobile and fixed-wired networks. Integration planning is an integral part of the UbiComp architecture. The analysis of the case studies suggested the existence of an UbiComp application development path. Figure 5 envisions a possible development path for a fictional drilling machine business. The goal of phase 1 is to automatically identify real world objects, such as drilling machine, drills, baskets and places such as constructions sites, and link them to their virtual proxy, all without human intervention. The virtual proxy in phase 1 is called a passive proxy because it only stores data and is not able to automatically initiate actions their effects back into the real world. It collects and stores static and dynamic data about its real world counterpart, including history (how often has a specific drill been sharpened) and relationships to other real world objects (drill A is in drill box B, which is currently in basket C, which is on truck D driving to construction site E). A technical solution for this kind of auto-identification and auto-linking is currently under development. Phase 1 enables simple, manually initiated services such as track and trace, theft control, etc. Phase 2 adds sensors to the objects. For instance the drilling machines start to collect operation times, speed, type of drill combinations, sound, and temperature. The drill boxes count the number of drills within a box, etc. Phase 2 would enable more complex manual queries, and it would provide the basis for phase 3, where active proxies automatically initiate actions with and their effects back to the real world. For example, they could feed all sensor information into the drilling machine company’s customer relation management system, thereby enabling the company to run new business models or services, such as leasing drilling machines, automatic replenishment of tools, advice on the proper use of drills, automatic theft control, restricting usage to registered users and/or locations, and service route optimization, thus ultimately enhancing customer retention.

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Virtual world

Active proxy

Passive proxy

Procurement system: please order 10 new colleagues to be delivered to Mike on 7/4 Drilling machine was removed on 7/3 6:30 a.m.

Mike: In 109 min I am gone. In your bag you soon find 10 new colleagues, otherwise dial 0844 84 84 85 for next service provider with global maintenance contract

On 7/3 Mike used me for 3 h at his Zurich site

Still have 109 min to drill until I need a shave

Sensoring

ePC 01.0001A72.000024.000005R673 Identification ePC 01.001114R.004534.0003543AQ1 ePC 01.0002437.000A375.00000Z3765

Real world

Figure 5: UbiComp application vision

However, this paper only discussed an optimistic and constructive view of a possible future hybrid world. First, it (purposely) omitted the huge, and yet unresolved, technical questions surrounding issues in the areas of autoidentification, location awareness, sensoring, energy management, security, communications protocols, operating systems, programming languages, active (hybrid) materials, data fusion, data representation, data mining, humancomputer interaction, application architecture, application development methods, testing, and infrastructure adoption. Second, it neglected potential social and ethical impacts. For example, UbiComp solutions, which may carry a critical socio-political dimension, are the monitoring of disabled or mentally ill persons, children, and prisoners. Here, questions of ethics coexist with privacy and security issues, and call for a discussion where progress in technologies, and consequently, business economics, tend to play a secondary role.

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6 Bibliography [Abowd et al. 2001] Abowd, G.D., Brummitt, B. and Shafer, S., UbiComp 2001: Ubiquitous Computing, International Conference Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, 2001 [Boriello/Want 2000] Borriello, G. and Want, R., Embedded Computation meets the World Wide Web, Communications of the ACM, 43 (5). 59-66, 2000 [Davenport 1993] Davenport, T.H., Process Innovation: Reengineering Work through Information Technology, HBS Press, Boston, 1993 [Fleisch/Strassner 2001] Fleisch, E., Strassner, M., Business Applications Using UbiComp Technologies, M-Lab, St. Gallen/Zurich, 2001 [Gershenfeld 2000] Gershenfeld, N.A., When Things Start to Think, Owl Books, Boston, 2000 [Kelly 1998] Kelly, K., New Rules for the New Economy, Viking Penguin, New York, 1998 [Kelly 1995] Kelly, K., Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World, Addison-Wesley, 1995 [Langheinrich 2001] Langheinrich, M., Dagstuhl Seminar on Ubiquitous Computing, September 2001, http://www.inf.ethz.ch/vs/events/dag2001/, 2001 [Mattern 2001] Mattern, F., The Vision and Technical Foundations of Ubiquitous Computing, Upgrade, 2 (5), 2001 [McCarthy 2001] McCarthy, J., Active environments: Sensing and responding to groups of people, Journal of personal & ubiquitous computing, 5 (1), 2001 [Norman 1998] Norman, D.A., The Invisible Computer, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998 [Österle/Fleisch/Alt 2001] Österle, H., Fleisch, E. and Alt, R., Business Networking: Shaping Enterprise Relationships on the Internet, Springer, Berlin, 2001 [Sarma/Brock/Ashton 2000] Sarma, S., Brock, D.L. and Ashton, K., The networked physical world: Proposals for engineering the next generation of computing, commerce, and automaticidentification, MIT Auto-ID Center, Cambridge, MA, 2000 [Scheer 1991] Scheer, A.W., Principles of Efficient Information Management, Springer, Berlin, 1991 [Tennenhouse 2000] Tennenhouse, D., Proactive Computing, Communications of the ACM, 43 (5). 43-50, 2000 st

[Weiser 1991] Weiser, M., The computer of the 21 century, Scientific American, 1991 [Wigand/Picot/Reichwald 1997] Wigand, R.T., Picot, A. and Reichwald, R., Information, Organization and Management: Expanding Markets and Corporate Boundaries, John Wiley & Son, Chichester, 1997

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