Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The building of supply chains in AgroGrid is guided by a supply chain template,
which defines roles (producer, consolidator, logistics, retailer, etc.) needed for
building the product specific supply chain. A party wanting to create a supply chain,
called supply chain manager (SC-Manager), selects in the first step from the list of
available templates an appropriate supply chain template (e.g. for building a supply
chain for apricots). If there is no such template already defined, the AgroGrid
portal also offers possibilities to define new templates. After selection of a specific
template, the system provides an overview of required roles and, after successful
negotiation, also an overview of contracted parties with specific roles participating
in the supply chain.
In the next step, the SC-Manager queries the capacity registry for a specific
capacity (e.g., for apricots provided by an apricot producer) needed for building the
supply chain. After selecting the required capacity from the capacity registry, the
SC-Manager (who acts as a capacity requester) initiates the negotiation process by
retrieving the SLA-Template from the capacity provider.
In the following negotiation step, the SC-Manager sends an SLA-offer to the
capacity provider. The offer contains the SLA-Template with modified or unchanged
SLA-terms. The provider may reject or accept the offer by sending an acceptance or
rejection notification to the requester with the SLA.
After receiving an acceptance notification from the capacity provider with the
accepted SLA, the system automatically sets up the SLA-Monitoring & Evaluator
service, which is responsible for continuous monitoring and evaluation of estab-
lished SLAs. As a result of the continuous monitoring and evaluation process the
SLA-Evaluator service creates an SLA-evaluation report, which reflects the fulfil-
ment of SLA, and, in case of a detected SLA violation it serves for the determina-
tion of penalty and compensation. The AgroGrid portal provides an overview of
monitored SLAs and allows retrieving a specific SLA-evaluation report to approve
fulfilment of contracted SLAs. After a SC-Manager has established an SLA with
one party of the required role - for example an apricot provider -, he might select
further capacities and initiate the negotiation process with more capacity providers
(e.g., provider of logistics capacity) or even with capacity requester (e.g. retailer) in
order to complete the building of the supply chain.
The described procedure allows composition of dynamic supply chains, by
chaining of parties participating in sale, delivery, and production of particular
product or food trade unit. Thereby, the dynamicity aspect for building of dynamic
supply chains refers to the timely extension of the supply chain to include new
partners, and to the possibility of removing or replacing supply chain members,
whose performance consistently falls below acceptable norms, by new supply chain
members.
11.2.2 AgroGrid Platform
AgroGrid's full lifecycle solution for
dynamic capacity markets
is based on a
market place concept that allows companies in the agriculture food sector to offer
and search for capacities, negotiate SLAs, and create dynamic supply chains (Volk
