Critical Management Issues for Implementing RFID in Supply Chain Management

The benefits of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology in the supply chain are fairly compelling. It has the potential to revolutionise the efficiency, accuracy and security of the supply chain with significant impact on overall profitability. A number of companies are actively involved in testing and adopting this technology. It is estimated that the market for RFID products and services will increase significantly in the next few years. Despite this trend, there are major impediments to RFID adoption in supply chain. While RFID systems have been around for several decades, the technology for supply chain management is still emerging. We describe many of the challenges, setbacks and barriers facing RFID implementations in supply chains, discuss the critical issues for management and offer some suggestions. In the process, we take an in-depth look at cost, technology, standards, privacy and security and business process reengineering related issues surrounding RFID technology in supply chains

Complex Networks from Simple Rewrite Systems

Complex networks are all around us, and they can be generated by simple mechanisms. Understanding what kinds of networks can be produced by following simple rules is therefore of great importance. We investigate this issue by studying the dynamics of extremely simple systems where are `writer' moves around a network, and modifies it in a way that depends upon the writer's surroundings. Each vertex in the network has three edges incident upon it, which are colored red, blue and green. This edge coloring is done to provide a way for the writer to orient its movement. We explore the dynamics of a space of 3888 of these `colored trinet automata' systems. We find a large variety of behaviour, ranging from the very simple to the very complex. We also discover simple rules that generate forms which are remarkably similar to a wide range of natural objects. We study our systems using simulations (with appropriate visualization techniques) and analyze selected rules mathematically. We arrive at an empirical classification scheme which reveals a lot about the kinds of dynamics and networks that can be generated by these systems

An Objective Definition of Damage Spreading - Application to Directed Percolation

We present a general definition of damage spreading in a pair of models. Using this general framework, one can define damage spreading in an objective manner, that does not depend on the particular dynamic procedure that is being used. The formalism is applied to the Domany-Kinzel cellular automaton in one dimension; the active phase of this model is shown to consist of three sub-phases, characterized by different damage-spreading properties.Comment: 10 pages, RevTex, 2 ps figure

Evolving a rule system controller for automatic driving in a car racing competition

IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games. Perth, Australia, 15-18 December 2008.The techniques and the technologies supporting Automatic Vehicle Guidance are important issues. Automobile manufacturers view automatic driving as a very interesting product with motivating key features which allow improvement of the car safety, reduction in emission or fuel consumption or optimization of driver comfort during long journeys. Car racing is an active research field where new advances in aerodynamics, consumption and engine power are critical each season. Our proposal is to research how evolutionary computation techniques can help in this field. For this work we have designed an automatic controller that learns rules with a genetic algorithm. This paper is a report of the results obtained by this controller during the car racing competition held in Hong Kong during the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2008).Publicad

NSSDC Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies for Space and Earth Science Applications, volume 1

Papers and viewgraphs from the conference are presented. This conference served as a broad forum for the discussion of a number of important issues in the field of mass storage systems. Topics include magnetic disk and tape technologies, optical disks and tape, software storage and file management systems, and experiences with the use of a large, distributed storage system. The technical presentations describe, among other things, integrated mass storage systems that are expected to be available commercially. Also included is a series of presentations from Federal Government organizations and research institutions covering their mass storage requirements for the 1990's

Control Strategy of the Brake Dynamics for Railway Vehicles Equipped with Anti-Slip-Device

From the point of view of railway vehicle braking processes it is an important requirement to maintain the roll-ing-motion-state of the wheels, i.e. the macro-sliding-free rolling contact between the vehicle wheels and the rail-head, since in the course of rolling in the presence of creep-dependent contact forces, the braking force transmittable on the vehicle through the rail/wheel contact patch is considerably greater, than the braking force transmittable on the vehicle in the case of wheel blocking and on the railhead continuously sliding non-rotating wheels. In this study some control strategies will be introduced that have been elaborated for developing anti-slip-device systems of railway vehicles, and that meet the requirement of treating the always present uncertain-ties in the force transfer conditions through the wheel/rail rolling contact by a stochastic model. With such mod-els it is possible to develop anti-slip-devices having advantageous braking effectiveness in the operation also in case of uncertain tribological characteristics along the track