RFID Applications and Potentials

The economy of the 21st-century enterprise is driven by efficiency, which, among other initiatives, requires enterprise business processes and workflows to be supported by adequate information technology to achieve this efficiency. Information technology plays a key role in transforming enterprises, especially through the way these enterprises conduct business and interact with partners and customers

Improving visibility using RFID – the case of a company in the automotive sector

The purpose of this paper is to present some results of an ongoing project that intends to improve internal logistics visibility using RFID at an electronics company of the automotive sector. The first step of this project was to identify the traceability problems of raw materials at the company and to design an RFID–based solution to solve such problems. Additionally, the main challenges related to the implementation of that solution were identified and discussed. Through interviews, documental analysis, and observation, the current internal logistic processes are described and the main traceability problems identified. This paper is, mainly, concerned with presenting the problems and the difficulties found by the project team. Additionally, the RFID based solution is proposed (prototype description) as also the key challenges, expected results and advantages (e.g. more increased control of raw materials and automatization of handling and storing processes).This work has been financially supported by the Portugal Incentive System for Research and Technological Development in scope of the projects in co-promotion nº 002814/2015 (iFACTORY 2015-2018).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Digital service analysis and design : the role of process modelling

Digital libraries are evolving from content-centric systems to person-centric systems. Emergent services are interactive and multidimensional, associated systems multi-tiered and distributed. A holistic perspective is essential to their effective analysis and design, for beyond technical considerations, there are complex social, economic, organisational, and ergonomic requirements and relationships to consider. Such a perspective cannot be gained without direct user involvement, yet evidence suggests that development teams may be failing to effectively engage with users, relying on requirements derived from anecdotal evidence or prior experience. In such instances, there is a risk that services might be well designed, but functionally useless. This paper highlights the role of process modelling in gaining such perspective. Process modelling challenges, approaches, and success factors are considered, discussed with reference to a recent evaluation of usability and usefulness of a UK National Health Service (NHS) digital library. Reflecting on lessons learnt, recommendations are made regarding appropriate process modelling approach and application

Towards a Center for Modeling and Simulation: The Case for Jordan

Modeling and Simulation (M&S) has recently become an important area that is pursued by many researchers and practitioners due to the role it plays in understanding complex systems and problems. We have therefore witnessed the establishment of many M&S organizations in the last two decades especially in the more developed world. Less developed countries are starting to recognize the need for such capability especially that the problems they face are not less complex. In this paper, we present a preliminary study towards a business plan for establishing a scientific center for Modeling, Analysis, Simulation and Animation in Jordan (JoSAMA) and the value it can bring to the academic, industrial and governmental communities in Jordan and potentially in the Middle East. This effort was funded by the Fulbright Specialist Program and hosted by the German-Jordanian University, Amman, Jordan

A wide-spectrum approach to modelling and analysis of organisation for machine-assisted decision-making

This paper describes a modeling approach that helps to represent necessary aspects of complex socio-technical systems, such as organization, in an integrated form and provides a simulation technique for analyzing these organisations. An actor-based language is introduced and compared to a conventional simulation approach (Stock-and-Flow) by simulating aspects of a software services company

Service-Oriented Architecture Modeling: Bridging the Gap between Structure and Behavior

International audienceModel-driven development of large-scale software systems is highly likely to produce models that describe the systems from many diverse perspectives using a variety of modeling languages. Checking and maintaining consistency of information captured in such multi-modeling environments is known to be challenging. In this paper we describe an approach to systematically synchronize multi-models. The approach specifically addresses the problem of synchronizing business processes and domain models in a Service-oriented Architecture development environment. In the approach, the human effort required to synchronize independently developed models is supplemented with significant automated support. This process is used to identify concept divergences, that is, a concept in one model which cannot be matched with concepts in the other model. We automate the propagation of divergence resolution decisions across the conflicting models. We illustrate the approach using models developed for a Car Crash Crisis Management System (CCCMS), a case study problem used to assess Aspect-oriented Modeling approaches

Complexity Levels of Representing Dynamics in EA Planning

Abstract. Enterprise Architecture (EA) models provide information on the fundamental as-is structure of a company or governmental agency and thus serve as an informational basis for informed decisions in enterprise transformation projects. At the same time EA models provide a means to develop and visualize to-be states in the EA planning process. Results of a literature review and implications from industry practices show that existing EA planning processes do not sufficiently cover dynamic aspects in EA planning. This paper conceptualizes seven levels of complexity for structuring EA planning dynamics by a system of interrelated as-is and to-be models. While level 1 represents the lowest complexity with non-connected as-is and to-be models, level 7 covers a multiperiod planning process also taking plan deviations during transformation phases into account. Based on these complexity levels, a multi-stage evolution of EA planning processes is proposed which develops non-dynamic as-is EA modeling into full-scale EA planning