nents like software agents & services and solutions for establishing security and trust. .... guidelines on how to customise software agents and services)?.
Intelligent Networked Devices for Enabling Proactive Collaboration with Customers Harald Sundmaeker, Sebastian Scholze, Dragan Stokic, Stefan Faltus ATB Institute for Applied Systems Technology Bremen GmbH, Wiener Str. 1, 28359 Bremen, Germany, {Sundmaeker, Scholze, Dragan, Faltus}@atb-bremen.de Abstract A proactive collaboration with customers facilitates serving of their explicit as well as implicit requirements. However, current supply chain organisation and installed information systems have often problems with dynamic interfacing of supply chain actors and with supporting real life interaction principles. Therefore, specifically interaction between supplier’s suppliers with customer’s customer is hardly to achieve, notably if distributed and asynchronous interaction takes place in between those peers. Therefore, the paper presents a research approach, which tackles this problem scenario by aiming at an intelligent usage of networked devices like e.g. PDAs and mobile phones, combined with the enabling technologies “Radio Frequency Identification” and “Global Navigation Satellite Systems”. Furthermore, the key technical characteristics of a potential solution environment are presented, outlining the major components with respect to an architectural and security infrastructure as well as software agents and services for supporting decentralised coordination of tasks in supply chains. Keywords Intelligent Networked Devices, Collaborative Environments, Networked Business, Software Agents & Services
1
Introduction
The intense collaboration with customers is a key prerequisite to fully and timely understand as well as satisfy their dynamically changing requirements. This requires diverse interactions in business networks, including communication between the supplier’s supplier and customer’s customer. This is hard to be achieved in complex business networks, including vertical as well as horizontal network dimensions, especially due to self-organisation of single network entities in relation to the continuous and dynamic adjustment of the overall network. Also evolving external requirements need to be satisfied (e.g. legislative demands, technology enablers) and process disturbances (e.g. delivery deviations, incompatibility of supplied semi-finished products) need to be handled. A promising opportunity to effectively enable this collaboration is expected in the usage of highly distributed networked devices to facilitate just-in-time exchange of knowledge and experience among Large Enterprises, Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) and customers. Networked devices (e.g. mobile phones, PDAs, notebooks, displays) are used almost everywhere by private users and in daily business. They are providing their own computing capability, becoming more advanced as well as less expensive and can be combined with an increasing number of other devices. Therefore, theoretically most business processes are already ubiquitously covered with an overwhelming amount of such Information and Communication Technology (ICT). They are generally neither easily interconnected nor interoperable often missing the required ICT related environment and infrastructure. However, an “intelligent usage of networked devices for enabling a proactive collaboration with customers” is currently hardly possible. For enabling “ambient intelligent support” of human operators, it is essential to generate and use information about the human operator, the (process) environment and the interaction as well as the context [Stokic 06]. Proven technologies offering diverse potentials for facilitating the
automatic generation of such information are Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). But despite their potentials, the practical usage for realising intelligent system solutions is at its beginning. Anyway there are already high demands for employing such new solutions like GNSS tracking in the business process [Lahaye 07], while even the “classical RFID technology” is still requiring further research [CERP 07]. On the top of that, especially SMEs are often struggling with administrative overheads and technical barriers when aiming at the adoption of solutions in complex networks of actors. They are specifically requiring methodological guidance for the design, realisation and introduction of such technology enabled potentials. Therefore, key challenge and prerequisite for realising an effective usage of networked devices incorporates the following issues: Elaborating systematic interaction models and patterns as templates for creation of methodological guidelines and as systematic reference for reusing technological components like software agents & services and solutions for establishing security and trust. Realisation of a technological infrastructure, which facilitates the distributed usage of heterogeneous networked devices, the dynamic change in usage of specific devices, distributed user profile management and roaming in decentralised networks. Enabling the asynchronous and decentralised operation of networked devices which are not permanently “online” or connected to other systems. Guaranteeing security and establishing trust between nodes in open/distributed networks. These aspects are analysed in the work presented, focusing on problems related to realisation of intelligent networked devices, based on the usage of RFID and GNSS in the scope of SME driven application scenarios, which are considered some of the most critical scenarios from both technical and organisational point of view, due to their high complexity and required flexibility.
2
Relation to Existing Theories and Work
Decentralised collaboration and coordination of underlying complex networks is realised in the physical world by a large number of actors, having defined personal interfaces to each other. Over past decades, such complex networks dramatically evolved, spanning globally distributed collaboration of Large Enterprises and SMEs, including horizontally and vertically integrated chains. This was feasible due to strategic and often large players, having power to establish and operate centralised systems for collaboration in networks or supply chains. However, benefits were mostly remaining with large players. From technological point of view, specifically RFID and GNSS technology are promising to drastically facilitate the realisation of such distributed solutions, specifically enabling integration of implicit inputs and outputs in an ICT system. This disburdens users from activities which are not directly related to business process execution, enabling a transparent user support [Stokic 06], not requiring an interruption of added-value tasks.
2.1
Realisation and Introduction of Decentralised Coordination in Supply Chains
For a decentralised coordination of tasks, customers and SMEs need to be enabled to actively play their role in the chain management. They might even need to become a focal point for a massively decentralised coordination of a “real time network”, which is able to continuously evolve/extent itself and to easily interface with existing systems. To enable the realisation and introduction of such new solutions, appropriate methodologies are required for describing and modelling complex interaction patterns within distributed business networks. On the one hand, methodological approaches need to provide an appropriate modelling language and tool support, which is generally offered in the market by a large amount of available products and even standards providing constructs for enterprise modelling [ENV
12204], highly appropriate to guide the design of interaction patterns. On the other hand, SMEs need additional support w.r.t. “work instruction” style guidelines when modelling complex interactions; involving and qualifying the respective employees over all hierarchy levels, providing sound working instructions and not requiring any a priori methodical qualification [Kirchhoff 04]. Therefore, SME end-users need to be supported in identifying the most appropriate interaction patterns and the required networked devices, not requiring a specific expertise on mobile devices or on RFID and GNSS technologies. Moreover, guidelines shall clarify the technology potentials for the organisation as well as for customers. They need also to include best practice guidelines on how to achieve user’s acceptance as well as estimations about the envisaged training of end users to empower them for effectively using a new solution.
2.2
RFID enabled Devices
When aiming at supporting SMEs to provide ICT enabled solutions, promising enablers are enhanced RFID-based systems. Currently RFID is mostly applied in e.g. theft protection, simple identification, lifestyle, security or production monitoring. Constant struggle to be addressed are costs, transmission range and functionality, while currently new functionality is approaching (i.e. security, extra memory and sensors) [Sarma 07; CERP 07] and the amount of tags which can be read in parallel as well as cost benefit ratio is continuously improving [Wolfram 07]. In summary, they are becoming more advanced and less expensive, and can be combined with an increasing number of devices, available or likely to be massively introduced within next 3-5 years. Specifically combination of tags itself with additional devices (e.g. mobile telephones, PDA) enables new interaction paradigms in future applications (e.g. “Near Field Communication” enabled interaction like touch & go, confirm, connect or explore [Lauhde07]). However, for medium term and futuristic applications, the RFID paradigm needs to change from relatively simple “identification of objects at a distance”, to the much more challenging “communication between objects” and the even more challenging “distributed intelligence (or Internet) of things”, which implies that there must be a scaleable, efficient, reliable, secure and trustworthy infrastructure, in order to link all involved objects [CERP 07]. Individuals in organisations, customers as well as the public audience have different perceptions of such potentials. Often fearing threats which might follow implementations of RFID-based systems (e.g. concerns w.r.t. security, privacy, radiation, health, environment). On top of that, in a wide public on-line consultation, about 60% of the 2,190 respondents said they did not know enough to adequately assess the pros and cons of RFID technology [EC 07]. This potentially jeopardises the acceptance of RFID enabled solutions. To overcome such concerns technology impact of potential solutions needs to be explained, envisaged benefits for the actors need to be validated and customers need to be trained on how to handle potential risks of upcoming solutions.
2.3
GNSS based Services
GNSS technology, generally aims at realisation of location based services (LBS) as well as application specific data transmission via satellites (e.g. publish/subscribe based functionality). GNSS satellite infrastructure was until recently based upon GPS (USA), but now also GLONASS (Russia) is available free of charge and GALILEO (Europe) is underway. These independent but compatible infrastructures enormously increase the application potential of GNSS services. Accurate and real-time position and time information can dramatically increase the quality and relevance of all sorts of commercial services, while potential developments and related products are in the market introduction phase or even still under development. Of great importance is the fact that first applications, such as those realised in car navigation or tracking & tracing market, have created a wide supplier base (infrastructure and user electronics) to boost LBS business, facilitating provision of ICT services at the right time and place. On longer term, indoor positioning techniques will come into play, which are currently being developed and will come to the market in a few years time [Avila 2006].
3
Research Approach
The research work presented in this paper is still running and is currently focusing on the organisational dimension for realising and introducing decentralised coordination in supply chains, incorporating application scenarios from food chain and construction industry. However, to carefully analyse supply chain actor and end-user requirements, two interaction reference models (basic SME-driven integrated enterprise structures) are proposed as baselines and incubators for application and business specific software, services and application development: SME coordinated gateways of the integrated enterprise: Network of ‘n’ customers and ‘n’ suppliers, while coordinated by an SME, which acts as a gateway between customers and suppliers (e.g. retailers at different “gateways” in the food chain). Basically, it is a continuously repeating interaction of the coordinating SME with a known set of suppliers and mainly a larger amount of the same customers or consumers while those are generally remaining anonymous. The interaction is widely based on not articulated requirements with infrequent and unsystematic procedures for collecting customer’s requirements and feedback. Major objective is to enable SMEs to realise a distributed ICT supported coordination of their supplier interaction (independent of supplier specific legacy systems) as well as to realise at least a unidirectional communication with their customers, to specifically broadcast target group oriented product/ service information. Project based self-evolving networks: Basically consisting of one customer which is supplied by ‘1’ to ‘n’ SME(s). In general there is an intense interaction in one project of known actors, between SME and customer as well as in between SMEs. It is based on explicitly defined and agreed requirements (e.g. supply of food for large events). Major objective is to enable all actors in a sub-network to add participants as well as to initiate and realise decentralised and asynchronous coordination. The compatibility of these reference models will be analysed in the food and construction application scenarios. And as already introduced above, “advanced” applications are requiring a new dimension of interaction to be supported according to the appropriate ICT based added value services, for enabling such highly decentralised and asynchronous interaction of loosely coupled actors. They can neither be based on static large scale systems, due to evolving infrastructures and devices, nor on predefined systems functionality, due to the heterogeneity of actors and the impossibility to achieve an accepted overall system governance or central authority for system maintenance and change [CuteLoop 08]. Therefore, a paradigm shift is required in the engineering of solutions which are based on networked devices enabled intelligence in comparison to characteristics of classical solutions when aiming at realisation of the required development environment for such solutions. The results will be integrated to realise “generic interaction services”, which will be customised for the two application scenarios and serving for their test and assessment. In this way, the research aims at assuring the provision of generic solutions which are verified under real application scenario conditions. The application scenarios will be used for both technological as well as organisational proof of concept for the new approach to be realised, while specifically trust between companies and of customers will be further investigated, as one of the key indicators for solution acceptance, since trust as a behavioural aspects is highly subjective to the individual and it depends on cultural background [Hofstede 06]. Therefore, an integrated enterprise which is distributed over different European or Global regions with actors from diverse hierarchy levels needs to handle also different cultural backgrounds, which require different combinations of trust generating elements especially in terms of quality and safety of products and services.
4 4.1
Findings Methodological and Technological Support of SMEs
As presented above, RFID and GNSS technologies highly support the realisation of implicit input and output of an ICT system, disburdening the user from activities which are not directly related to the business process execution. This implicit input and output from and to the ambience, processes or infrastructure enables an important add on to the envisaged multimodal interaction with mobile devices, while highly facilitating the usage of such devices (e.g. avoiding tedious log-in procedures, repeated identification of individual preferences, combining explicit inputs with additional semantics related to the current situation of the process or the user). Moreover, RIFD and GNSS will drastically ease the process of collecting added value knowledge on the human operator (e.g. location, context, intention), the (process) environment in which the human operator is working and its interaction with its environment as well as the ICT system itself and his interaction with the environment. Therefore, RFID and GNSS technologies are providing a key prerequisite to implement a solution based on intelligent networked devices, promising greater user-friendliness, more efficient service support, user-empowerment, and support for human interactions, which is highly related to the definition of ambient intelligence (AmI) [DG 07]. Such solutions may surround people with electronic environments, sensitive and responsive to their wishes. For the implementation of such “intelligent” solutions especially in an SME environment, end-user as “non-experts in technology” need to be enabled to identify most appropriate technologies for a human centred business improvement [Kirchhoff 06], even before a technical realisation can be taken into account. First methodologies and technological solutions are available [AMI-4-SME 07] aiming to support SMEs, consultancy as well as ICT providers, but they still need to be enhanced in the scope of exploiting the potentials of intelligent networked devices for enabling a proactive collaboration with customers. Therefore, accompanying to the development of technological solutions, emphasis needs to be put on the elaboration of methodological guidelines and instructions to provide an innovative approach on how to intelligently network the devices. But such methodologies need to go beyond general project or procurement management guidelines. They also need to cover technical dimensions to answer potential questions of stakeholders (i.e. from software end-users, over project managers, software engineers, administrators to CIO or CTO) like: How to combine different services to provide customised interaction services for specific application scenarios and how to set up the services for a specific environment? How to design, evaluate and implement the right architecture and infrastructure for an integrated enterprise, supporting massively distributed networked devices (i.e. including guidelines on how to customise software agents and services)? How to adopt security services in an integrated enterprise, establishing trust in culturally diverse environments? Such a methodology needs to serve as guideline for actors providing practical instructions.
4.2
Service Structure
As explained above, key approach for testing and assessing intelligent networked devices is to develop generic services (i.e. basic services, event-processing agents, security services and generic interaction services) for supporting typical, while still generic, Interaction Models. They need to be explicitly validated and to facilitate this, a grouping into three types of services is recommended: (1) generic services, applicable for diverse application scenarios, (2) reusable services, serving as templates/libraries for further adaptation in specific services, and (3) specific services highly adapted to the specific needs of an application scenario. However, to transfer such generic services to specific application scenarios, additional integration effort is required,
for finally realising customised interaction services, providing specific functionality/ features within a business process.
4.3
Technical Characteristics of an Infrastructure for Intelligent Networked Devices
Software quality characteristics (i.e. based on ISO 9126) were initially analysed for classical solutions and for solutions incorporating intelligent networked devices, trying to group those characteristics and to identify basic differences, as input for the subsequent design of the related infrastructural issues. However, it was aimed to identify the extremes of both sides not aiming at a holistic characterisation of all possible combinations of solutions available in the market, nor reflecting the continuous innovation and migration of “classical solutions” towards the “internet of things/objects” [Sundmaeker 08]. The grouping of technical characteristics in relation to overall system aspects as presented in the following figure 1 are considered as main issues for ICT solution realisation. They were assigned to the specific software quality characteristics as follows: (1) the characteristics portability, maintainability, interfaces, middleware, infrastructure and performance, were assigned to enterprise architecture development; (2) location & amount of functionality, usability, efficiency and availability were grouped as key issues when designing the functional behaviour of the ICT solution, while the research was specifically addressing business oriented intelligent agents; (3) security and privacy were grouped and even extended by trust as an additional characteristic; (4) finally, governance was connected to the realisation of interaction models and patterns, which are determining the system behaviour from an organisational or process point of view, having a major impact or direct correlation to roles and responsibilities of actors.
Business oriented Intelligent Agents
Interaction Models Enterprise Architecture Development
Trust, Security, Privacy
PET
Business Rules
User Interfaces
Devices, like enhanced RFID based Systems
Figure 1: Technical Characteristics in relation to overall system aspects [Sundmaeker 08].
Based on this grouping and the basic differences of evolving solutions towards usage of intelligent networked devices, the following solution alternatives are considered as most appropriate for realising intelligent networked devices for enabling a proactive collaboration with customers: Enterprise Architecture Development: For supporting operation and usage of mobile and distributed devices like enhanced RFID based systems, an architectural approach is required which is enabling the realisation of a distributed solution, allowing the operation on heterogeneous platforms, facilitating asynchronous processing, supporting publishersubscriber relations of peers, enabling the evolution of infrastructure & devices, supporting the execution of logical units of functionality with different physical entities of the system as well as enabling the reuse and combination of existing and new system functionality. Event-driven architectures (EDA) follow the publish-and-subscribe pattern, where event producers and event consumers are completely decoupled and many-to-many asynchronous communications between them are supported. On the contrary, service oriented architectures (SOA) follow request-and-reply model, where typically “service consumers” establish a one-to-one synchronous communication with the “service provider”. Therefore, in such an integrated enterprise architecture combining SOA and
EDA, the SOA part can focus on decomposition of business functions, whereas the EDA part will focus on business events. Therefore, the integration of an EDA and SOA, is considered as most appropriate approach to facilitate the distributed and asynchronous collaboration within the supply chain. Business Oriented Intelligent Agents: The asynchronous interaction in a distributed network of actors with limited online connection of autonomous peers is quickly suffering of the inability to exchange information in that moment when the end-user is operating his device. This leads immediately to a breakdown of “experiencing an activity”. Business oriented intelligent agents can fill the gap w.r.t. the user input and generate the required input for assuring its perception of the expected system/device functionality and reaction time. Therefore, the agents need to be driven by events within the business process to enable a system driven as well as context based system behaviour. Nevertheless, the respective agents (e.g. monitoring, negotiation or management agents), need to be based on defined business rules and have to be implemented according to the available resources and system performance. Trust, Security and Privacy: Due to the basic risks of RFID and GNSS based solutions as well as potential data losses w.r.t. malfunction or theft of mobile devices, it needs to be aimed at a provision of Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET) with both technical solutions for agent & middleware security, authentication, authorisation and trust as well as appropriate interaction paradigms for user/ customer centric interfaces. Therefore, the usage of the MILS architectural approach (Multiple Independent Levels of Security) is promising the envisaged potentials for highly separating applications, data and networks. It maintains the isolation of data across domains and even displaying data from different security domains in different windows on the same screen, while it is specifically designed for distributed and decentralised systems. Interaction Models: When aiming at the realisation of an interconnected and interoperable solution in the food supply chain, several SME type actors need to be empowered to somehow jointly implement an appropriate solution. Generally they are neither experienced with new technologies, nor are having a vast experience in process innovation approaches and the elaboration of reusable and widely applicable interaction models and patterns to directly facilitate the process analysis and ICT specification (e.g. with respect to amount and location of functionality, system usability, performance, efficiency, availability and governance). Therefore, they need to incorporate potential organisational structures and patterns as well as related technology solution alternatives, facilitating the specification and selection of the envisaged solution. These technical characteristics of an infrastructure for intelligent networked devices will serve for further development of prototype solutions, which will be tested and assessed in two application scenarios from food and construction industry.
5
Conclusions
The presented research is aiming at the realisation of a holistic approach allowing an effective utilisation of intelligent networked devices for enabling a proactive collaboration with customers in complex supply chains. Key prerequisite for solution realisation is an infrastructure enabling the asynchronous and decentralised interaction of actors and specifically empowering SMEs to become an integral as well as a driving part for solution realisation. A promising opportunity to support this is the employment of an architecture combining EDA and SOA principles, to be combined with event driven agents and an architectural approach for security and trust. However, specifically SMEs are often missing the required knowledge for realising such solutions and are not aware of which potentials might be realised. On top of that, they need to be supported with “work instruction” style guidelines enabling end-users, which are “non-experts in
technology” to carefully specify, select and introduce appropriate solutions. The would help to assure the delivery of the required business benefits, guaranteeing the realisation of secure and trusted solutions as well as enabling the careful evolution of existing (classical) systems. Moreover, there is a continuous need for establishing real showcases in diverse business domains, enabling technological and organisational proof of concept, supporting experience exchange from users to ICT providers and vice versa as well as enabling the generalisation of solutions/ components for their employment in diverse other sectors. The presented research is carried out in the scope of the currently running EU-funded CuteLoop project (Customer in the Loop: Using Networked Devices enabled Intelligence for Proactive Customers Integration as Drivers of Integrated Enterprise – http://www.cuteloop.eu). The CuteLoop project just started and it is funded in the scope of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) domain in the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community. It is carried out by an international consortium from France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal, The Netherlands and UK. References AMI-4-SME (2007); Ambient Intelligence Solutions for Systemic Innovation in Manufacturing SMEs. AMI-4SME project flyer available via project Web site http://www.ami4sme.org, visited on December 21st 2007. Avila-Rodriguez, Jose-Angel; Wallner, Stefan; Guenter, W.Hein (2006); How to optimize GNSS signals and codes for indoor positioning. Proceedings of the International Technical Meeting of the Institute of Navigation, IONGNSS 2006, 26-29 September, 2006, Fort Worth Convention Center, Fort Worth, Texas. CEN ENV 12204 (1995); Advanced Manufacturing Technology Systems Architecture – Constructs for Enterprise Modelling. European Prestandard, CEN TC310, “Advanced Manufacturing Technology”, December 1995. Cluster of European RFID Projects (2007) – CERP; Working Paper on future RFID Research Needs. Available via CERP Web site http://www.rfid-in-action.eu/cerp. September 2007. CuteLoop Research Project Consortium (2008); Short description of the Research Project CuteLoop, funded by CEC. Available via CERP website http://www.rfid-in-action.eu/cerp. DG Information Society (2007); http://Europe.eu.int/information_society/policy/ambienti, updated 11 March, 2004; last visited on December, 21st 2007. European Commission (2007); The 2006 Report on ICT for Enterprise Networking. Brussels, May 2007. Hofstede, Gert Jan; Jonker, Catholijn M.; Meijer, Sebastiaan; Verwaart, Tim (2006); Modelling Trade and Trust Across Cultures. Trust Management: 4th International Conference, iTrust 2006: Proceedings, Pisa, Italy, May 16-19, 2006. - Berlin Heidelberg : Spinger Verlag, 2006 - p. 120 - 134. Kirchhoff, Uwe, Sundmaeker, Harald; San Martin, Fernando; Wall, Brian; Campos, José; Xeromerites, Stathes; Terziovski, Mile (2004); How to Speed-up the IMSS Related Innovation in Manufacturing SMEs. Proceedings of the international IMS forum 2004, Como, Italy. Kirchhoff, Uwe; Stokic, Dragan; Sundmaeker, Harald (2006); AmI Technologies Based Business Improvement in Manufacturing SMEs. eChallenges Conference; Barcelona, Spain, 25-27. October 2006, pp. 1266-1273. Lahaye, Wim (2007); Asset tracking and tracing with the Space Checker SC-200 network. White Paper from SpaceChecker, Leuven, Belgium. Lauhde, Mika (2007); RFID (NFC) and Mobile Phones: Enabling easy, convenient and intuitive ways to use mobile devices - Enabling also call for sense of responsibility. RFID Forum 2007. Brussels, March 13th 2007. Sarma, Sanjay (2007); RFID: Today and the Future. Conference on RFID – The next step to the internet of things. November, 16th 2007; Lagoas Park, Lisbon, Portugal. Stokic, Dragan; Kirchhoff, Uwe; Sundmaeker, Harald (2006); Ambient Intelligence in Manufacturing Industry: Control System Point of View. The Eighth IASTED International Conference on Control And Applications; Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 24-26. May 2006, pp. 63-68. Sundmaeker, Harald (2008); Proactive Customers Integration as Drivers of an Integrated Food Chain; 110th EAAE Seminar ‘System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks’ Innsbruck-Igls, Austria; February 18-22, 2008. Wolfram, Gerd (2007) - MGI METRO Group Information Technology; Value creation through RFID, today and in the future. RFID Forum 2007. Brussels, March 13th 2007.
