Supply Chains and Rural Development in the Asia Pacific Region

Rapid income growth and urbanization are having profound impacts on the food system, food producers and rural areas in the developing Asia Pacific economies. Meeting the challenge of rural development will depend on better integrating rural areas with fast-growing urban areas where the composition of food demand is changing and the logistics of supply are growing more complex. Possible government options include investment in transportation infrastructure—roads, railroads and waterway—and providing rural communities and small-scale producers the tools they need to better adapt to the rapid spread of modern supermarkets and their supply chains.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Reconfigurable and transportable container-integrated production system

In this paper, the concept and the prototype realization of a novel reconfigurable small-footprint manufacturing system in a transportable container is presented. The containerized format enables transportation of the system to provide on-site manufacturing, enabling the benefits of localized service delivery without duplication of equipment at multiple locations. Three industrial product use cases with varying manufacturing and performance requirements were analyzed. All of the use cases demanded highly customized products with high quality in low production volumes. Based on their requirements, a general system specification was derived and used to develop a concept for the container-integrated factory. A reconfigurable, modular manufacturing system is integral to the overall container concept. Production equipment was integrated in the form of interchangeable process modules, which can be quickly connected by standard utility supply and control interfaces. A modular and self-configuring control system provides assisted production workflow programming, while a modular process chain combining Additive Manufacturing, milling, precision assembly and cleaning processes has been developed. A prototype of the container-integrated factory with reconfigurable process modules and control system has been established, with full functionality and feasibility of the system demonstrated

Optimized Strategy in Cloud-Native Environment for Inter-Service Communication in Microservices

Cloud computing has become a prominent technology in the software development industry. The term “cloud-native” is derived from cloud computing technologies and refers to the development and deployment of applications in a cloud environment. In the software industry, most enterprise-grade software buildings use the microservice architecture and cloud natively, ultimately leading to an expansive development in the software development framework. Microservices are deployed in a distributed environment and function as independent services. However, they need to communicate with each other in order to fulfill the functional requirement. Additional latency will be introduced when communicating with other services. Hence, it will impact the overall application response time and throughput. This research proposes a solution for the aforementioned problem in the cloud-native environment. A Request-response-based TCP communication solution has been developed and tested in the cloud-native, containerized environment. Experimental results showed that the turnaround time of the proposed solution is shorter than that of traditional HTTP communication methods. Furthermore, the results summarize that both vertical and horizontal scaling are improving the overall performance of the systems performance in terms of response time. Conclusively, the proposed solution improved the microservice performance and preserved the existing cloud-native qualities, such as scalability, maintainability, and portability

Embedded device farm proof-of-concept:enabler for test execution on target hardware as a part of continuous delivery pipeline

Abstract. Agile software development has produced a completely new way of working into the field of software development. The new focus is to continuously integrate, deliver, and deploy each software change. The term continuous practices is used to refer to these practices. Comprehensive testing plays a major role in so called continuous delivery pipeline. The goal of this thesis is to implement an embedded device farm, a system which is used to effortlessly connect embedded hardware targets as part of continuous delivery pipeline. Hardware is playing a big role in embedded software development and testing. On the other hand, it is seen as a major challenge in implementing continuous practices for embedded software project. Embedded device farm is used to interact with target hardware targets by both automation systems and individual developers in unified manner. Six platforms are evaluated for the purpose and a system called Linaro Automation and Validation Architecture (LAVA) is integrated as part of existing CI/CD service. In addition, this thesis describes the continuous practices in general introducing the benefits as well as the challenges related to implementing them. A closer look is taken into adopting the practices into embedded systems domain. Embedded systems software development differs from traditional or web software development. Embedded systems’ domain specific characteristics and challenges related to continuous practices are presented.Sulautetun laitefarmin konseptitoteutus : mahdollistaja testien suorittamiselle kohdelaitteistossa osana jatkuvan toimituksen ketjua. Tiivistelmä. Ketterä kehitys on tuonut ohjelmistokehityksen alalle täysin uudet toimintatavat, joiden keskipisteessä on ohjelmiston muutosten jatkuva integrointi, jatkuva toimitus ja jatkuva muutosten käyttöönotto. Näistä uusista menetelmistä käytetään kollektiivisesti nimitystä jatkuvat menetelmät. Kattavalla testaamisella on tärkeä rooli niin sanotussa jatkuvan toimituksen ketjussa. Tämän työn tavoitteena on toteuttaa sulautettu laitefarmi, jolla sulautettua tietokonelaitteistoa voidaan vaivattomasti yhdistää osaksi jatkuvan toimituksen ketjua. Tietokonelaitteistolla on tärkeä rooli sulautettujen järjestelmien ohjelmistokehityksessä ja -testauksessa, mutta toisaalta laitteisto nähdään suurena haasteena toteutettaessa jatkuvia menetelmiä sulautetussa ohjelmistoprojektissa. Sulautetun laitefarmin kautta sekä automaatiojärjestelmät että yksittäiset ohjelmistokehittäjät voivat käyttää sulautettuja laitteistoja yhtenäistetyllä tavalla. Työssä arvioidaan kuuden eri järjestelmän soveltuvuutta käyttötarkoitukseen, ja järjestelmä nimeltään Linaro Automation and Validation Architecture (LAVA) integroidaan osaksi olemassa olevaa CI/CD palvelua. Lisäksi tässä työssä esitellään jatkuvat menetelmät yleisesti, niiden toteuttamiseen liittyvät haasteet ja niillä saavutettavat hyödyt. Työssä paneudutaan tarkemmin menetelmien toteuttamiseen sulautettujen järjestelmien alalla. Sulautettujen järjestelmien ohjelmistot eroavat perinteisistä ja web-ohjelmistoista, joten jatkuvia menetelmiä ja niihin liittyviä haasteita tarkastellaan myös sulautettujen järjestelmien näkökulmasta

Blockchain Design for a Secure Pharmaceutical Supply Chain

In the realm of pharmaceuticals, particularly during the challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply chain for drugs has faced significant strains. The increased demand for vaccines and therapeutics has revealed critical weaknesses in the current drug supply chain management systems. If not addressed, these challenges could lead to severe societal impacts, including the rise of counterfeit medications and diminishing trust in government authorities. The study identified that more than the current strategies, such as the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) in the U.S., which focuses on unique authentication and traceability codes for prescription drugs, is needed to eliminate the risk of drug counterfeiting. The study noted the need for a centralized, secure system for authenticating drugs before distribution. This investigation explores the potential of blockchain technology as a solution to these challenges. Blockchain’s decentralized, immutable, and transparent nature could revolutionize drug supply chain management by enhancing traceability, security, and transparency. This technology combats counterfeit drugs, builds stakeholder trust through cryptographic security, improves monitoring and compliance with realtime data access, and automates processes through smart contracts. Furthermore, blockchain facilitates data exchange, fostering collaboration across the supply chain. Our work focuses explicitly on utilizing blockchain technology to address information security concerns in the pharmaceutical supply chain. While it involves leveraging existing innovations like DNA tagging and unique identities for drug identification, it is essential to clarify that the development of these specific technologies is attributed to other researchers and teams. We contribute to integrating these existing technologies into a blockchain framework to enhance drug tracking and data management. Each drug’s unique characteristics are recorded and stored on the blockchain via smart contracts. Moreover, the research compares three major open-source consortium blockchain solutions, assessing their functionality and scalability. Simulated attacks were conducted on these blockchain platforms to evaluate their resilience against data breaches and service disruptions. The results indicate that adherence to security design principles is crucial for data security, and the unique architecture of each platform significantly influences its performance in terms of speed, scalability, and fault tolerance

Design choices for next-generation IIoT-connected MES/MOM:An empirical study on smart factories

The role of enterprise information systems is becoming increasingly crucial for improving customer responsiveness in the manufacturing industry. However, manufacturers engaged in mass customization are currently facing challenges related to implementing Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) concepts of Industry 4.0 in order to increase responsiveness. In this article, we apply the findings from a two-year design science study to establish the role of manufacturing execution systems/manufacturing operations management (MES/MOM) in an IIoT-enabled brownfield manufacturing enterprise. We also present design recommendations for developing next-generation MES/MOM as a strong core to make factories smart and responsive. First, we analyze the architectural design challenges of MES/MOM in IIoT through a selective literature review. We then present an exploratory case study in which we implement our homegrown MES/MOM data model design based on ISA 95 in Aalborg University's Smart Production Lab, which is a reconfigurable cyber-physical production system. This was achieved through the use of a custom module for the open-source Odoo ERP platform (mainly version 14). Finally, we enrich our case study with three industrial design demonstrators and combine the findings with a quality function deployment (QFD) method to determine design requirements for next-generation IIoT-connected MES/MOM. The results from our QFD analysis indicate that interoperability is the most important characteristic when designing a responsive smart factory, with the highest relative importance of 31% of the eight characteristics we studied

CD/CV: Blockchain-based schemes for continuous verifiability and traceability of IoT data for edge-fog-cloud

This paper presents a continuous delivery/continuous verifiability (CD/CV) method for IoT dataflows in edge¿fog¿cloud. A CD model based on extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) mechanism as well as a directed acyclic graph (DAG) construction, enable end-users to create efficient schemes for the continuous verification and validation of the execution of applications in edge¿fog¿cloud infrastructures. This scheme also verifies and validates established execution sequences and the integrity of digital assets. CV model converts ETL and DAG into business model, smart contracts in a private blockchain for the automatic and transparent registration of transactions performed by each application in workflows/pipelines created by CD model without altering applications nor edge¿fog¿cloud workflows. This model ensures that IoT dataflows delivers verifiable information for organizations to conduct critical decision-making processes with certainty. A containerized parallelism model solves portability issues and reduces/compensates the overhead produced by CD/CV operations. We developed and implemented a prototype to create CD/CV schemes, which were evaluated in a case study where user mobility information is used to identify interest points, patterns, and maps. The experimental evaluation revealed the efficiency of CD/CV to register the transactions performed in IoT dataflows through edge¿fog¿cloud in a private blockchain network in comparison with state-of-art solutions.This work has been partially supported by the project “CABAHLA-CM: Convergencia Big data-Hpc: de los sensores a las Aplicaciones” S2018/TCS-4423 from Madrid Regional Government, Spain and by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation Project “New Data Intensive Computing Methods for High-End and Edge Computing Platforms (DECIDE)”. Ref. PID2019-107858GB-I00; and by the project 41756 “Plataforma tecnológica para la gestión, aseguramiento, intercambio preservación de grandes volúmenes de datos en salud construcción de un repositorio nacional de servicios de análisis de datos de salud” by the PRONACES-CONACYT, Mexic