5,212 research outputs found

    Traceability -- A Literature Review

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    In light of recent food safety crises and international trade concerns associated with food or animal associated diseases, traceability has once again become important in the minds of public policymakers, business decision makers, consumers and special interest groups. This study reviews studies on traceability, government regulation and consumer behaviour, provide case studies of current traceability systems and a rough breakdown of various costs and benefits of traceability. This report aims to identify gaps that may currently exist in the literature on traceability in the domestic beef supply chain, as well as provide possible directions for future research into said issue. Three main conclusions can be drawn from this study. First, there is a lack of a common definition of traceability. Hence identifying similarities and differences across studies becomes difficult if not impossible. To this end, this study adopts CFIA’s definition of traceability. This definition has been adopted by numerous other agencies including the EU’s official definition of traceability however it may or may not be acceptable from the perspective of major Canadian beef and cattle trade partners. Second, the studies reviewed in this report address one or more of five key objectives; the impact of changing consumer behaviour on market participants, suppliers incentive to adopt or participate in traceability, impact of regulatory changes, supplier response to crisis and technical description of traceability systems. Drawing from the insights from the consumer studies, it seems as if consumers do not value traceability per se, traceability is a means for consumers to receive validation of another production or process attribute that they are interested in. Moreover, supply chain improvement, food safety control and accessing foreign market segments are strong incentives for primary producers and processors to participate in programs with traceability features. However the objectives addressed by the studies reviewed in this paper are not necessarily the objectives that are of most immediate relevance to decision makers about appropriate traceability standards to recommend, require, subsidize etc. In many cases the research objectives of previous work have been extremely narrow creating a body of literature that is incomplete in certain key areas. Third, case studies of existing traceability systems in Australia, the UK, Scotland, Brazil and Uruguay indicate that the pattern of development varies widely across sectors and regions. In summary, a traceability system by itself cannot provide value-added for all participants in the industry; it is merely a protocol for documenting and sharing information. Value is added to participants in the marketing chain through traceability in the form of reduced transactions costs in the case of a food safety incident and through the ability to shift liability. To ensure consumer benefit and have premiums returned to primary producers the type of information that consumers value is an important issue for future research. A successful program that peaks consumer interest and can enhance their eating experience can generate economic benefits to all sectors in the beef industry. International market access will increasingly require traceability in the marketing system in order to satisfy trade restrictions in the case of animal diseases and country of origin labelling, to name only a few examples. Designing appropriate traceability protocols industry wide is therefore becoming very important.traceability, institutions, Canada, consumer behaviour, producer behaviour, supply chain, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Health Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade, Livestock Production/Industries, Marketing, Production Economics, D020, D100, D200, Q100,

    Traceability system for capturing, processing and providing consumer-relevant information about wood products: System solution and its economic feasibility

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    Current research and practice reports indicate the existence of purchase barriers concerning eco-friendly products, e.g. wood products. These can be ascribed to consumers' mistrust regarding the non-observable environmental impact of wood products. To counter the mistrust, wood products are commonly endowed with eco-labels, which may be perceived mostly as a marketing tool, therefore not fulfilling their intended purpose. Current studies have shown that providing consumers with wood product information based on traceability systems increases product trust and purchase intentions, with those information items most valued by consumers being identified as well. Based on this, the paper proposes a traceability information system for the capturing, processing, and provision of product information using examples of wood furniture. Furthermore, a cost-benefit model for the proposed solution is developed. The calculations indicate the possibility of implementing traceability at the item level based on a four-layer system architecture enabling the capture and delivery of all information valued by consumers at acceptable costs. The proposed system helps to overcome purchase barriers of eco-friendly products, increasing consumers' product trust and purchase intentions

    A Privacy Preserving Framework for RFID Based Healthcare Systems

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    RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) is anticipated to be a core technology that will be used in many practical applications of our life in near future. It has received considerable attention within the healthcare for almost a decade now. The technology’s promise to efficiently track hospital supplies, medical equipment, medications and patients is an attractive proposition to the healthcare industry. However, the prospect of wide spread use of RFID tags in the healthcare area has also triggered discussions regarding privacy, particularly because RFID data in transit may easily be intercepted and can be send to track its user (owner). In a nutshell, this technology has not really seen its true potential in healthcare industry since privacy concerns raised by the tag bearers are not properly addressed by existing identification techniques. There are two major types of privacy preservation techniques that are required in an RFID based healthcare system—(1) a privacy preserving authentication protocol is required while sensing RFID tags for different identification and monitoring purposes, and (2) a privacy preserving access control mechanism is required to restrict unauthorized access of private information while providing healthcare services using the tag ID. In this paper, we propose a framework (PriSens-HSAC) that makes an effort to address the above mentioned two privacy issues. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first framework to provide increased privacy in RFID based healthcare systems, using RFID authentication along with access control technique

    Benefits of connecting rfid and lean principles in health care

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    The performance management process in health care is far behind compared to the manufacturing and service industries. Although nowadays the health care organizations are able to deal with a greater rank diseases, their cost, quality and delivery has essentially not improved significantly, and the difference with the other industries even seems to have increased. As opposed to this situation health care has a tremendous opportunity to deploy lean principles to reduce internal/external costs, improve patient safety, increase profits, reduce litigation and decrease the dependence on Government and Insurance. The application of these principles is being facilitated by the use of the new technologies. A new technology allowing personnel to constantly "see" what's happening with regards to patients schedule, backlog, workflow, inventory levels, resource utilization, quality, etc., is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). The aim of this paper is to analyse the benefits that can be derived from the joint use of lean principles and RFID technology in health care

    Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

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    Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

    BENEFITS OF CONNECTING RFID AND LEAN PRINCIPLES IN HEALTH CARE

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    The performance management process in health care is far behind compared to the manufacturing and service industries. Although nowadays the health care organizations are able to deal with a greater rank diseases, their cost, quality and delivery has essentially not improved significantly, and the difference with the other industries even seems to have increased. As opposed to this situation health care has a tremendous opportunity to deploy lean principles to reduce internal/external costs, improve patient safety, increase profits, reduce litigation and decrease the dependence on Government and Insurance. The application of these principles is being facilitated by the use of the new technologies. A new technology allowing personnel to constantly "see" what’s happening with regards to patients schedule, backlog, workflow, inventory levels, resource utilization, quality, etc., is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). The aim of this paper is to analyse the benefits that can be derived from the joint use of lean principles and RFID technology in health care.

    Pervasive computing at tableside : a wireless web-based ordering system

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    Purpose &ndash; The purpose of this paper is to introduce a wireless web-based ordering system called iMenu in the restaurant industry. Design/methodology/approach &ndash; By using wireless devices such as personal digital assistants and WebPads, this system realizes the paradigm of pervasive computing at tableside. Detailed system requirements, design, implementation and evaluation of iMenu are presented.Findings &ndash; The evaluation of iMenu shows it explicitly increases productivity of restaurant staff. It also has other desirable features such as integration, interoperation and scalability. Compared to traditional restaurant ordering process, by using this system customers get faster and better services, restaurant staff cooperate more efficiently with less working mistakes, and enterprise owners thus receive more business profits. Originality/value &ndash; While many researchers have explored using wireless web-based information systems in different industries, this paper presents a system that employs wireless multi-tiered web-based architecture to build pervasive computing systems. Instead of discussing theoretical issues on pervasive computing, we focus on practical issues of developing a real system, such as choosing of web-based architecture, design of input methods in small screens, and response time in wireless web-based systems.<br /

    First experiences with Personal Networks as an enabling platform for service providers

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    By developing demonstrators and performing small-scale user trials, we found various opportunities and pitfalls for deploying personal networks (PNs) on a commercial basis. The demonstrators were created using as many as possible legacy devices and proven technologies. They deal with applications in the health sector, home services, tourism, and the transportation sector. This paper describes the various architectures and our experiences with the end users and the technology. We conclude that context awareness, service discovery, and content management are very important in PNs and that a personal network provider role is necessary to realize these functions under the assumptions we made. The PNPay Travel demonstrator suggests that PN service platforms provide an opportunity to develop true trans-sector services
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