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workable influencing of the process is. This even allowstaking into consideration foreseeable futuredevelopments, being directed towards achieving fullyoptimal processes, and efficiently and foresightedlyreacting on unforeseeable events (e.g. technical faults) inshort terms.The use of transponders can enable topicalinformation acquisition and efficient transfer to thedecision-making instances of the control andmanagement systems alongside the entire process. Thisstimulates process intelligence, that can be implementedeither with the logistics objects or with the systemelements, in the sense of the above explained ability toadaptively and knowledgeably act for achieving theoverall process goals in an optimal way. Whereasintelligence with the system elements mainly requires anextension of their usually existent control and decisionmakingcomponents, qualification of the logistics objectsneeds new approaches with regard to both technicalimplementation of intelligence and appropriate design ofthe logistics processes. Today’s approaches for enablinglogistics objects to act intelligently differ in theinformation carrier on one hand and the processcompetences handed over to the logistics object on theother.With regard to the way of attaching an intelligentcomponent to the logistics object, there is a differencebetween intelligent load carriers and intelligent goods.METRO and Wal-Mart apply the strategy of attachingtags to the load carriers, whereas OTTO wants to equipeach single article with a transponder. Advantages anddisadvantages of either of these alternative solutionsdirectly depend on the logistics processes to be achieved.If the units on a load carrier are exclusively treated as awhole that is homogeneously or inhomogeneouslycomposed of individual goods (e.g. a delivery to acustomer), the intelligent load carrier is the sufficientobject for process control.Furthermore, it could still act as intelligent objecteven when being unloaded. This is of special advantagefor returning empty carriers for being loaded again (e.g.in closed-loop logistics). In this case, the goods do nothave any own process intelligence and can only becontrolled by an external instance once they have beenseparated from the load carrier. But if the goods orarticles themselves are objects of complex logisticsprocesses (e.g. in order picking processes) and supposedto move self-determined through the respective systemsor networks, this might not be sufficient and each itemindividually has to be equipped with an intelligentcomponent. Of course, this goes in hand with a far highertechnical and cost-related effort, which eventually can bejustified by the achievable process improvements.According to the abilities a logistics object has, differentlevels of process intelligence can be defined:• Pre-condition for process intelligence is the fact thateach single object can unambiguously be identifiedand the IT system knows about its current state andlocation. Especially object localization inside acompany provides a special technological challenge,because the position needs perfectly to be found on acentimetre scale. In principle, this can be achievedby use of technology available today, but only atcosts far from being economically acceptable to awide range of potential applications. Here, furthertechnological progress is strongly required;• At the next level of intelligence, powerful sensortechnology is integrated into the object forperceiving environmental conditions and externalinfluences, such as temperature (e.g. withrefrigerator containers). This allows registering andrecording an object’s lifecycle alongside the logisticschain to continuously monitor the process, assurequality, trace back manipulations with the objectetc.;• If the object is able not only to perceive itsenvironment, but also to communicate with it at anytime, new possibilities open up for both topicallyreacting on changing situations and forming objectclusters by small-scale linking of tags ofneighbouring objects (e.g. for mutual surveillance);• The highest level of intelligence is reached when theobject additionally (e.g. in case of lackingcommunication) can act autonomously andpurposefully. In this case, application-specificsoftware functionality of the control andmanagement system is handed over to the object andthe tag becomes an autonomous agent. This goes inhand with a kind of decoupling effect and throughthis it can lead to a long-lasting reduction ofcomplexity with the higher-level IT systemsimultaneously improving performance. Preconditionsare the equipping of logistics objects withintelligent technologies and in any case theirintegration into the existent IT landscape (seeScholz-Reiter et al. 2005). Furthermore, anintelligent environment (i.e. intelligenceimplemented in system components) can providesustainable support to the autonomy of the intelligentlogistics objects. The latter is especially advisableagainst the background of a quasi-natural limitationof the amount of functionality to be handed over tothe objects because of limited memory and increasedenergy requirement.To the same extent, the degree of process intelligencewith the logistics objects increases and new possibilitiesopen up for implementing new kinds of logisticsprocesses. But at the same time logistics process designfaces more and new challenges. At presentAnnual Proceedings of Vidzeme University College “ICTE in Regional Development”, 200655