Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
(1997) calculated that 27% of all edibles available in the USA are thrown away
instead of being eaten. Latest studies of the University of Arizona show, that 50%
of all produced perishables in the US were never consumed (Ilic at al. 2009). The
combination of the previously mentioned huge market size and the possibility to
reduce waste of perishable goods show the enormous economic impact.
Another problem in the food industry is the lack of quality and food safety
ensuring mechanisms. A customer receiving food products from another supply
chain partner can't be sure that he has received fresh and safe food, not affected by
dangerous substances like dioxin contaminated chickens, hormone injected cattle
etc. Therefore an integrated tracking and tracing solution is essential. Most existing
solutions are based on a centralized architecture and therefore they can't ensure
data ownership - an essential issue for protecting company's data from industrial
spying. Additionally, today's tracking and tracing is used mainly for documentation
purposes, in order to find out
manually
where the failure in the supply chain has
occurred in the
past
. The better way would be an integrated solution for continuous
automated real-time monitoring and evaluation of tracking and tracing data.
To solve the problems of coordinating companies alongside the supply chain
and providing a cost effective, trust building, quality assurance building mecha-
nism for collaboration in order to exploit capacities in an economically efficient
manner, AgroGrid blueprints and implements a full life-cycle solution for dynamic
capacity markets integrated with distributed tracking and tracing, VO (Virtual
Organisation) management and automated monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.
AgroGrid's dynamic capacity markets mainly address supply chain companies from
the European food and agriculture industry. Supply chain companies are enabled
to offer, negotiate, book, monitor and evaluate (over) capacities, such as produc-
tion or logistics capacities. And AgroGrid is fully integrated with TraceTracker's
GTNet® - Global Traceability Network, the world's leading solution for distrib-
uted tracking, tracing, and collaboration in food markets (TraceTracker 2009). This
represents a unique win-win situation because of the close cooperation between
AgroGrid and GTNet®.
11.1.3 The Business Experiment - Partners and Work Performed
The Business Experiment AgroGrid started in April 2008 and ended in June 2009.
During the project phase, the software engineering process was completed, and all
the preparations to start up a business from the scratch were done. In particular, this
means that a detailed design specification based on an accurate requirements anal-
ysis was worked out. The design phase was followed by the implementation of the
AgroGrid system and finally, the implemented AgroGrid solution was tested against
the previously defined use case.
TraceTracker AG, the industrial partner within the Business Experiment
provides a sophisticated state-of-the-art tracking and tracing solution (GTNet®).
This solution is based on a decentralized data storage architecture where all the
relevant tracking and tracing information can be accessed via a browser or via other
web service interfaces. By using GTNet®, companies are able to track and trace
