Trace + Track

December 11, 2009

Home → Trace + Track

Asset management cases differ in an important respect from supply chain management. The important difference is the closed circulation in asset management, and the flow-through in supply chain management.

This is a difference that defines two broad categories of business cases in the current state of the art. The business cases can be further distinguished by information scope: from location centric, to item centric, and info centric. The functionality of wider information scope cases build on successful implementation of the more basic information scope.

The basis for all tracking based business is the – preferably automated – identification. The scope is local and gives the answer to the question: “What is in store?” Location centric asset management applications help companies authorize access to a location and prevent unauthorized removal of assets from a location. Location centric SCM helps improve the accuracy of inventory management records, and more efficient goods receipt and goods issue transactions.

Widening the information scope further, introduces the question: “Who has access? In developing tracking based business cases in both the asset management and supply chain domain it is important that access to critical information is controlled. For example, a company developing an item centric application further may require that only authorized service partners may update the maintenance information of an asset. Or, a manufacturer may for privacy and confidentiality reasons in a supply chain application want to restrict access to tracking data to the end-customer of the item.

“TraSer is designed as an entry-level solution platform,” says Dr Elisabeth Ilie-Zudor, a researcher at the Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Small companies prepared to share commercially sensitive information can add value and develop new services for their customers, using a distributed track-and-trace software solution. Small companies will be able to track-and-trace the movement of their materials and products from their suppliers through to their final customers, using a new open source and free solution.

One of the characteristics that make the TraSer track-and-trace solution different is that the product location information is not owned or controlled by a central authority. Instead, the companies along the supply chain share their data in the interests of all. TraSer will adapt easily to larger customers’ supply chain management or enterprise planning systems. And it enables companies to make rapid changes to their supply networks while maintaining high security levels.

Caption: Linking and tracking product-data changes across the systems of varying business partners

Most supply network systems designed to track products – such as the EPCGlobal ONS/EPCIS system being championed by major retailers and product manufacturers around the world – are centralised to some degree. ONS/EPCIS has a central lookup service that must be contacted by someone looking for information on a product with a unique identifier. The lookup service returns a service address for the unique identifier where further information on the product can be found.

There are advantages to the ONS/EPCIS approach. If the product changes ownership the details at the central lookup service can be changed to direct enquirers to the address of the new owner’s services for that product. But there are also major disadvantages. If the central lookup service can’t be accessed for whatever reason, services relating to the product can’t be accessed.

Caption: Selected features of various TraSer releases

By combining a product ID with a company web address, TraSer creates a unique product identifier that does not depend on registration at a centralised supervisory authority. Each company remains responsible for the maintenance of their own product data and any links to product-related services. By dispensing with the need for a central lookup service, the network is less vulnerable to malfunction or abuse.

Services for any item must remain accessible at the same address for the entire life span of the identifier. Where there is a change of ownership, the new owner would usually issue a new identifier. A TraSer network has a core of interconnected company servers, surrounded by an ‘envelope’ of clients. Those clients may gather information from bar codes, RFID tags or other carriers of a product’s unique identifier. Whatever client is used, the interface between client and server is uniform. Therefore, TraSer can adapt to a wide range of input types.

In the same way, TraSer can adapt to other IT components such as customers’ enterprise resource planning {ERP} or supply chain management systems. In TraSer pilots, client-adaptors were developed for some of the existing ERP and peripheral middleware systems.

“Developing adapters for all major ERP examples was not within the scope of the project, however, we have closely examined all issues of adapter design and implementation that may surface in a business application and we have provided guidelines that users can rely on for a systematic adaptation approach. Once users attain an adequate ‘picture of the world’ and become able to relate their own business scenarios with the possibilities and principles of TraSer, implementing an initial solution is fairly easy,” Ilie-Zudor added.

Commercialisation potential

During the TraSer project, the consortium members led a number of pilots – ranging from a closed-circuit asset-tracking system to the flow of materials along a supply chain. They also ran a special pilot tracking the distribution of electronic documents for a collaborative design project.

The TraSer platform remains in use at some of the piloting companies — One of the consortium members also offers TraSer as a tracking component in its enterprise IT solution; whilst another IT company outside the consortium has examined and tested the TraSer platform and explored how it can be coupled with its own tracking network solution.

Few small companies have track-and-trace capabilities at the moment. There is growing pressure for transparency along supply chains because of the greater certainty that gives customers. However, widespread use of systems like TraSer will require a change in mindset among SMEs.