EPCIS-Based Supply Chain Event Management

Summary

The coordination of assembly networks still represents a major challenge in today’s business environment. We present a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)-based inter-organizational system architecture that provides the technological basis for appropriate decision support. While mapping requirements in terms of information storage and exchange to technical system features, we consistently refer to the standards specified by the international industry consortium EPCglobal. In contrast to the pull-based architecture proposed by EPCglobal that is designed to retrieve and process historical data with a long lifetime, our system architecture follows a push approach. It allows for the propagation of relevant decision support information on past and future events with short validity. The EPCglobal event data specification is extended to include the required context information. A common protocol layer that interconnects supply chain stages is described in detail. The use of the protocol layer in connection with standardized formats for event and context data supports the interoperability of information systems used in different organizations and facilitates the integration of event-based applications into enterprise architectures. Using analytical methods, we evaluate the pull- and push-based architectures with respect to efficiency and reliability: the push-based architecture is shown to be particularly suitable for the realization of SCEM applications.