TRACKING AND TRACING PORTAL FOR PROJECT LOGISTICS. A Review on the Interconnectivity of EDI, ERP and Cloud-based Systems

Tracking and tracing is becoming an essential factor for the success of project logistics. The safety and on-time arrival of shipments has become the primary concerns for manufacturing companies. The paper has introduced an overall approach to track and trace their deliveries from the starting point to the end-customer. Detail implementation of the whole solution will not be presented, yet each component in the system will be analyzed and discussed. Electronic Data Exchange (EDI) has been around for the last 30 years and is known for providing logistics companies a fast, reliable way to exchange information electronically. EDI, together with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), are considered as one of the remarkable emerging technologies which play an important role in supply chain management tracking network. Although the implementation of EDI and ERP systems is not straight forward and not easy to established, many logistics companies are still seeing this as a vital factor which can help companies to establish a sustainable development, increase productivity and reduce costs. In this paper, the interconnectivity of EDI, ERP, and cloud-based systems in tracking and tracing portal will be analyzed in business perspective in order to define what benefits it could achieve for logistics and supply chain management tracking network. A case study of Logistics Tracking Network (LogTrack) project is presented and examined with the view to implement, evaluate and manage the interconnectivity of EDI, ERP, and cloud-based systems in a practical point of view. Information collected from this research project will be analyzed to provide a list of mapping attributes between these systems and used as a basic for the further development of tracking and tracing portal. The impacts and implications of such system for managing the business logistics are discussed and presented in conclusion.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

TRACKING AND TRACING PORTAL FOR PROJECT LOGISTICS. A Review on the Interconnectivity of EDI, ERP and Cloud-based Systems

Tracking and tracing is becoming an essential factor for the success of project logistics. The safety and on-time arrival of shipments has become the primary concerns for manufacturing companies. The paper has introduced an overall approach to track and trace their deliveries from the starting point to the end-customer. Detail implementation of the whole solution will not be presented, yet each component in the system will be analyzed and discussed. Electronic Data Exchange (EDI) has been around for the last 30 years and is known for providing logistics companies a fast, reliable way to exchange information electronically. EDI, together with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), are considered as one of the remarkable emerging technologies which play an important role in supply chain management tracking network. Although the implementation of EDI and ERP systems is not straight forward and not easy to established, many logistics companies are still seeing this as a vital factor which can help companies to establish a sustainable development, increase productivity and reduce costs. In this paper, the interconnectivity of EDI, ERP, and cloud-based systems in tracking and tracing portal will be analyzed in business perspective in order to define what benefits it could achieve for logistics and supply chain management tracking network. A case study of Logistics Tracking Network (LogTrack) project is presented and examined with the view to implement, evaluate and manage the interconnectivity of EDI, ERP, and cloud-based systems in a practical point of view. Information collected from this research project will be analyzed to provide a list of mapping attributes between these systems and used as a basic for the further development of tracking and tracing portal. The impacts and implications of such system for managing the business logistics are discussed and presented in conclusion.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Implementing a RosettaNet Business-to-Business Integration Platform Using J2EE and Web Services

The need for connecting information systems of collaborating organizations has become increasingly common. Significant advantages, such as increased speed, efficiency, and reliability, can be obtained by automating inter-organizational business processes. To achieve this, business-to-business integration, i.e. facilitating interoperation of disparate information systems of different organizations, must be performed. E-business frameworks are generic solutions for performing such integration. RosettaNet is an industry consortium that maintains an e-business framework that specifies inter-organizational business processes for multiple industries. Process specifications include messages that are exchanged between organizations, and related messaging choreography. RosettaNet Implementation Framework (RNIF) is the messaging portion of the RosettaNet framework, specifying how messages are exchanged. The purpose of this work is to gather experience on implementing RNIF with currently available tools. Research questions include how can RNIF be implemented in practice, how suitable are current tools and what could be improved in them, how much effort is required, what level of performance can be obtained, and are there any interoperability problems with different RNIF implementations. To answer these questions, a prototype system is developed using J2EE (Java 2 platform Enterprise Edition) and web service technologies. The prototype is a middleware system that provides RNIF functionality, on top of which RNIF-enabled applications can be constructed with less effort than creating an equivalent RNIF implementation from scratch. The prototype has two high-level goals. The first is to create a learning platform that students can use to practice RosettaNet-based integration: the platform provides RNIF-compliant messaging functionality, and students are free to concentrate on higher-level issues, such as semantics of messages that are exchanged. The second goals it to create a realistic RNIF software implementation, providing services that are assumed useful in a typical business-to business integration scenario, to gather experience on implementing such systems. The prototype is tested in laboratory environment. Testing is done for RNIF-compliance, interoperability with a commercial RNIF implementation, and performance. In addition, a student group applies the prototype to implement an integration system for a simple RosettaNet-based integration case, to test the prototype's practical usability and ease of use. The results show one possible way to implement RNIF in practice. The tools were suitable for the task, but some issues exist: some tools did not function perfectly and some improvement suggestions could be made. Performance level of processing in order of one RNIF message per second is relatively easily attainable; current tools do place limitations on how large messages can be transferred. Interoperability problems were detected: a commercial RNIF implementation produced invalid RNIF messages and some details in related specifications leave room for interpretation

Title of Thesis Implementing a RosettaNet Business-to-Business Integration Platform Using J2EE and Web Services

The need for connecting information systems of collaborating organizations has become increasingly common. Significant advantages, such as increased speed, efficiency, and reliability, can be obtained by automating inter-organizational business processes. To achieve this, business-to-business integration, i.e. facilitating interoperation of disparate information systems of different organizations, must be performed. E-business frameworks are generic solutions for performing such integration. RosettaNet is an industry consortium that maintains an e-business framework that specifies inter-organizational business processes for multiple industries. Process specifications include messages that are exchanged between organizations, and related messaging choreography. RosettaNet Implementation Framework (RNIF) is the messaging portion of the RosettaNet framework, specifying how messages are exchanged. The purpose of this work is to gather experience on implementing RNIF with currently available tools. Research questions include how can RNIF be implemented in practice, how suitable are current tools and what could be improved in them, how much effort is required, what level of performance can be obtained, and are there any interoperability problems with different RNIF implementations. To answer these questions, a prototype system is developed using J2EE (Java 2 platform Enterprise Edition) and web service technologies. The prototype is a middleware system that provides RNIF functionality

E-business framework enabled B2B integration

Standards for B2B integration help to facilitate the interoperability between organisations. These standards, often called e-business frameworks, guide integration by specifying the details for business processes, business documents and secure messaging. Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) is used in modern e-business frameworks instead of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) formats. Having XML as the data format is not enough for integration, but e-business frameworks are needed to guide how XML is used. This work analyses the many partly competing and overlapping e-business frameworks how they differ in support for business processes, documents and secure messaging. In addition, the effect of standardisation organisation to the outcome of the e-business framework is studied. In this work, one e-business framework, RosettaNet, is used to tackle the challenges of product development (PD) integrations. A proof-of-concept implementation of a RosettaNet integration is provided to support PD and the lessons learned are discussed. The current specifications lack good processes for PD integrations, while they fail in specifying the concepts needed for document management. Furthermore, there are interoperability problems due to a lack of expressivity of the schema languages to encode the business documents, and the current setup of integration takes a very long time. RosettaNet has a lot of flexibility in the specifications, and thus just supporting the same standard process is not enough for interoperability. With semantic technologies, many shortcomings of the current standards for B2B integration can be solved, as they make it possible to present constraints the current technologies have problems with. This work presents a practical case of B2B integration with semantic technologies and describes the benefits of applying such technologies.Standardit tukevat organisaatioiden välistä järjestelmäintegraatiota. Integroinnin standardit määrittelevät organisaatioiden välisiä liiketoimintaprosesseja, -dokumentteja sekä määrittelevät turvallisen tavan kommunikoida. Nykyaikaiset standardit ovat XML-perusteisia vanhemman EDI-formaatin sijaan. XML:n käyttö ei ole riittävästi takaamaan integraation onnistumista, vaan tarvitaan tarkempaa sopimista, miten XML:ää käytetään integraatiossa. Joukko yritystenvälisen integroinnin standardeja määrittelee tämän. Tässä työssä analysoidaan useaa, osittain kilpailevaa, yritystenvälisen integroinnin standardia ja tutkitaan miten ne tukevat liiketoimintaprosessien, -dokumenttien ja turvallisen viestinvälityksen määrittelyjä ottaen huomioon myös standardointiorganisaation vaikutuksen lopputulokseen. Tässä työssä RosettaNet-standardia sovelletaan tuotekehitykseen liittyvissä integroinneissa. Työssä esitetään prototyyppi tuotekehitystiedon integroinnista RosettaNetin avulla ja keskustellaan saavutetuista kokemuksista. Nykyiset spesifikaatiot tuotekehitysprosesseille ovat tarpeisiin riittämättömiä, koska tuki dokumenttien hallinnan käsitteistölle on puutteellinen. Myös RosettaNetin käyttämien XML-skeemakielien puutteellinen ilmaisuvoima aiheuttaa ongelmia dokumenttien yhteentoimivuudelle. Lisäksi integraation tekeminen on hidasta verrattuna tyypillisen tuotekehitysprojektin kestoon. RosettaNetin tarjoamissa spesifikaatioissa on paljon joustavuutta, joten saman standardiprosessin tukeminen ei tarkoita, että järjestelmät ovat yhteentoimivia. Nykyspesifikaatioissa ja niissä käytettyjen skeema-kielten ilmaisuvoiman puutteet voidaan osittain paikata käyttämällä semanttisia teknologioita. Tämä työ esittää, miten integraatioissa voidaan saavuttaa semanttisia teknologioita käyttämällä parempi yhteentoimivuus.reviewe