E-logistics of agribusiness organisations

Logistics is one of the most important agribusiness functions due to the idiosyncrasy of food products and the structure of food supply chain. Companies in the food sector typically operate with poor production forecasting, inefficient inventory management, lack of coordination with supply partners. Further, markets are characterised by stern competition, increasing consumer demands and stringent regulation for food quality and safety. Large agribusiness corporations have already turned to e-logistics solutions as a means to sustain competitive advantage and meet consumer demands. There are four types of e-logistics applications: (a) Vertical alliances where supply partners forge long-term strategic alliances based on electronic sharing of critical logistics information such as sales forecasts and inventory volume. Vertical alliances often apply supply chain management (SCM) which is concerned with the relationship between a company and its suppliers and customers. The prime characteristic of SCM is interorganizational coordination: agribusiness companies working jointly with their customers and suppliers to integrate activities along the supply chain to effectively supply food products to customers. E-logistics solutions engender the systematic integration among supply partners by allowing more efficient and automatic information flow. (b) e-tailing, in which retailers give consumers the ability to order food such as groceries from home electronically i.e. using the Internet and the subsequent delivery of those ordered goods at home. (c) Efficient Foodservice Response (EFR), which is a strategy designed to enable foodservice industry to achieve profitable growth by looking at ways to save money for each level of the supply chain by eliminating inefficient practices. EFR provides solutions to common logistics problems, such as transactional inefficiency, inefficient plant scheduling, out-of-stocks, and expedited transportation. (d) Contracting, a means of coordinating procurement of food, beverages and their associated supplies. Many markets and supply chains in agriculture are buyer-driven where the buyers in the market tend to set prices and terms of trade. Those terms can include the use of electronic means of communication to support automatic replenishment of goods, management of supply and inventory. The results of the current applications of e-logistics in food sector are encouraging for Greek agribusiness. Companies need to become aware of and evaluate the value-added by those applications which are a sustainable competitive advantage, optimisation of supply chain flows, and meeting consumer demands and food safety regulations. E-business diffusion has shown that typically first-movers gain a significant competitive advantage and the rest companies either eventually adopt the new systems or see a significant decline in their trading partners and perish. E-logistics solutions typically require huge investments in hardware and software and skilled personnel, which is an overt barrier for most Greek companies. Large companies typically are first-movers but small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need institutional support in order to become aware that e-logistics systems can be fruitful for them as well

Business-to-business e-commerce: an innovative tool for food chain management

A supply chain is a network of facilities and distribution options that performs the functions of procurement of materials, transformation of these materials into intermediate and finished goods, and the distribution of the final goods to customers. The management of food chains, particular of fresh produce chains, need to achieve two goals: (a) create efficient physical flows of products by minimising logistics cost, and reducing lead times (b) run an effective value chain by safeguarding mutual gains for all members of the chain, building trust between suppliers and buyers and at the same time maintaining quality for end consumers. Food chain management was always at a loss for tools to leveraging its efforts on achieving value for chain members and eventually the end-consumers. Although food industry, both in USA and Europe, has experimented with various alternative solutions to this multimillion chain management, yet more can be expected. Business-to-business e-commerce (B2B) appears to be an innovative tool that meets the high standards of the industry and the potential growth. This study examines the uses of B2B in food industry to give chain management solutions. It reviews the uses of B2B and, in particular, highlights the applications of B2B by small agribusiness in order to forge their ring in food chains. It builds upon communication in supply chain. It describes contracting as an example how B2B e-commerce can advance supply activities and reports the development of a B2B olive oil supply chain application. It concludes that B2B can be a strong leverage for food chain management to achieve its goals and produce value for the members of the chain and the end consumers

Multi Agent Systems in Logistics: A Literature and State-of-the-art Review

Based on a literature survey, we aim to answer our main question: “How should we plan and execute logistics in supply chains that aim to meet today’s requirements, and how can we support such planning and execution using IT?†Today’s requirements in supply chains include inter-organizational collaboration and more responsive and tailored supply to meet specific demand. Enterprise systems fall short in meeting these requirements The focus of planning and execution systems should move towards an inter-enterprise and event-driven mode. Inter-organizational systems may support planning going from supporting information exchange and henceforth enable synchronized planning within the organizations towards the capability to do network planning based on available information throughout the network. We provide a framework for planning systems, constituting a rich landscape of possible configurations, where the centralized and fully decentralized approaches are two extremes. We define and discuss agent based systems and in particular multi agent systems (MAS). We emphasize the issue of the role of MAS coordination architectures, and then explain that transportation is, next to production, an important domain in which MAS can and actually are applied. However, implementation is not widespread and some implementation issues are explored. In this manner, we conclude that planning problems in transportation have characteristics that comply with the specific capabilities of agent systems. In particular, these systems are capable to deal with inter-organizational and event-driven planning settings, hence meeting today’s requirements in supply chain planning and execution.supply chain;MAS;multi agent systems

Survey of Employers in two LGAs in Southwestern Sydney 2013-2014

This is a report on the responses of 82 employers in Campbelltown, Fairfield, Narellan, Camden and Smeaton Grange, to a 2013-2014 survey designed to gather employers’ views of their skilled labour needs, in order to remain competitive and grow through innovation. Overall recommendation A lighthouse Regional Manufacturing Innovation and Workforce Development Partnership be piloted, to pioneer a regional program of information exchange and shared workforce development accessible to small and medium businesses. This Government-funded model would be supported by creating seconded or earmarked cross-organisational staff positions and roles, with the brief of working across employer groups, key training organisations and the three tiers of government. Their brief would be to provide a focus for gathering, exchanging and disseminating information that is timely, targeted, well- integrated and readily digestible. This information would cover: - Case study approaches to setting up local innovation initiatives - Environmental scanning of technological developments and locally-relevant market opportunities in Australian and global markets - Best- practice tools such as strategies and resources for induction and advice about accessing customised delivery of accredited workplace, online and off-site learning to building workplace expertise - Regional Manufacturing occupational labour market data, and a regional job-matching website specifically for use by local employers and jobseekers. The Partnership would also provide funding and practical support for the creation of recognized workplace development programs and resource materials supporting small manufacturing businesses in training novices and in upskilling staff. The Partnership would have initial funding for five years, and be tasked with the specific mission of embedding into ongoing practice the structures and approaches it develops. Development of the Badgerys Creek Precinct provides a unique catalyst, with significant multiplier effects, for the creation of such a South Western Sydney Advanced Manufacturing Initiative, one of whose focal points might be an Advanced Manufacturing and Aircraft Maintenance hub

Risk management implementation in small and medium enterprises in the UK construction industry

Purpose – The competition and challenges facing construction firms during the recent recession have brought risk management (RM) to the fore in people’s minds. Examination of the difficulties of implementing RM in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UK construction industry has been relatively untouched. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – As part of on-going research to facilitate RM processing aimed at improving the competitiveness of SMEs, the difficulties in RM implementation were identified through a literature review of RM implementation in SMEs. Postal questionnaire were sent to SMEs who have experience of construction management. Findings – Of the 153 of SMEs responding, most highlighted that the main difficulty experienced is how to scale RM process to meet their requirements. None of the available standards explain the fundamental principle of applying RM to the situations that SMEs find themselves in. This difficulty is further exacerbated by a lack of management skills and knowledge in the adoption of RM tools or techniques to identify and analyse the business’ risks. Originality/value – The identified difficulties can be considered to develop a process to facilitate RM process within SMEs. </jats:sec

A functional architecture for an e-Engineering hub

Many Information Technology (IT) tools now exist to support collaborative working between engineering organisations. These often address operational issues rather than tactical or strategic issues. In particular, there are no effective tools for collaborative project planning between project partners. An electronic engineering hub (e-Hub) is considered useful in this regard. This paper presents the functional architecture of the e- Hub – a major research result of the EU funded e-HUBs project (e-Engineering enabled by Holonomic and Universal Broker Services). The e-HUBs project developed a universal collaboration platform for engineering outsourcing with focus on supporting collaborative project planning process. The e-Hub offers an extended set of functions to engineering service providers (mostly small and medium-sized enterprises) such as application hosting and definition and development of collaborative engineering workflows. The paper discusses the theoretical background and the supporting technologies for the development of the functional architecture and presents the deployment of the engineering e-Hub prototype in a construction scenario

Contract-based Data-Driven Decision Making in Federated Data Ecosystems

Data-driven economies on the World Wide Web are based on coordination mechanisms for exhange and AI-based processing data assets provided by independent actors. Architectures for data-driven economies currently focus on the exchange of data assets and leave processing of data assets to background mechanisms. Without binding obligations, data sharing situations favor "no data sharing" as dominant strategy between agents. We present a broker framework that supports contract-based sharing, trading and processing of data assets between actors under 'lack-of-trust' conditions. Electronic contracts guarantee ownership and control of data assets, execution of defined data analytical tasks based on AI models and sharing of results according to contractual promises. A technical architecture (TUCANA) is presented that realizes a federated data economic ecosystem including the broker framework. We present an application based on an implementation of TUCANA