Vision and Challenges for Realising the Internet of Things

intrigued to examine the correlation of various product and process data such as feeding and
weight, as well as maturation times in different cellar conditions, with the end product quality.
It is envisaged that in addition to a leaner operating environment, and increased traceability,
the RFID set up will also enable process innovation through the gathering of statistical data.
The work strand has not only provided comprehensive guidelines to manufacturers for finding
value in RFID and implementing an RFID based solution, but also showcased a successful
pilot to validate these guidelines.
The scope of this work was to improve reusable asset management in the supply chain, and to
evaluate, measure and propose how a secure track and trace solution based on GS1 EPCglobal
standards can improve the management of Reusable Transport Item (RTI) between the trading
partners. The work consisted of five tasks:
Market analysis: The first task analyzed the current situation regarding asset management in
the supply chain, providing a foundation for development of the project requirements and
solutions, since it defines its domain objectives and context. A survey analyzed the behaviour
of industries regarding assets management in Europe, allowing for complete description of the
two management models that exist in the supply chain such as:
The pooling model, where assets are owned by professional Pool Operators and rented to
users. Pool Operators manage the movement of their pools between trading partners
The exchange model, where assets are owned directly by their users. They are exchanged in
equal quantities and quality between trading partners
The analysis of strengths/weaknesses showed a strong lack of efficiency in the management of
RTIs circulating within the supply chain, with no common commitment among participants in
the supply chain to achieve better RTI control. Only some parties undertake actions to improve
the follow-up of assets. Moreover the level of non-commitment from other parties
makes it difficult, or even impossible, to control assets in the whole supply chain. This analysis
resulted in the compilation of a list of requirements needed for improving RTI management.
Requirements analysis: This task described the business and technical requirements to solve
Asset Management issues. Based on the initial survey, the scope was limited to the pooling
and exchange models for pallets and crates and mainly focused on the food and beverage sectors.
Analysis showed that in order to improve asset management, all actors of the supply
chain require more visibility on use of RTIs, tracking and tracing assets within their own internal
processes as well as during the trading partner processes. An accurate visibility on assets
flow could give the opportunity to improve asset use with better rotation, reducing over
stock or pool size, identifying companies responsible for causing problems, reducing damages,
losses, fraudulent uses or counterfeiting, as well as optimizing exchanges with partners and
therefore reducing the quantity of disputes, and enabling the tracking and tracing of the goods
contained in the asset by tracking and tracing the asset itself.
Visibility improvement depends on three functional requirements:
Identification: Assets can be “traced & tracked” in the supply chain if and only if they are
uniquely identified in a way that allows a company to distinguish one type of asset from another
(kind of asset, dimension, brand, composition, etc) and one unique asset among others
(for reasons of traceability)
Automated data capture: Companies need to automate their processes in order to improve
their productivity (i.e. reduce time per process) and their efficiency (better quality of data
collected). Barcode and RFID tags are the best data carriers to use for this automated identification
Data exchange: The supply chain is an “open loop” world and Asset Management involves
multiple trading partners. To improve their visibility, companies need to exchange relevant
information with their partners about asset movement in the flow. Certain information
needs to be stored in an Information System and shared with partners such as: Asset code,
Asset quantity, Asset location, Asset disposition.
For these functional requirements, GS1 and EPCglobal have developed a set of standards such
as the GRAI code, the GS1 128 Barcode, the UHF Gen2 RFID air interface, EDI messages and
EPCIS events. The pilot was then conducted to find how they could be used by trading partners
to reach the objectives.
CERP-IoT – Cluster of European Research Projects on the Internet of Things
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