iSURF project results
The iSURF Project ("An Interoperability Service Utility for Collaborative Supply Chain Planning across Multiple Domains Supported by RFID Devices" - http://www.isurfproject.eu) that received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no 213031 has been successfully completed.
The iSURF Project enables collaborative supply chain planning across domains through a flexible and dynamic environment and especially to facilitate European SMEs’ participation to collaborative supply chain planning processes. In order to achieve a knowledge-oriented inter-enterprise collaboration environment, there are a number of challenges that are handled in the iSURF Project as follows:
The first prerequisite is having an infrastructure to enable information exchange between partners. iSURF project provides a Service Oriented Collaborative Supply Chain Planning Process Definition and Execution Platform based on “Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR®)” guidelines.
Different parties are using different electronic business document standards or proprietary formats, which creates an interoperability problem during the exchange of these documents. iSURF project provides a Semantic Interoperability Service Utility (ISU) for achieving the semantic reconciliation of the planning and forecasting business documents. iSURF established a technical committee named “OASIS Semantic Support for Electronic Business Document Interoperability (SET)” under the OASIS umbrella in order to standardize the semantic specifications developed for iSURF ISU.
In order to realize visibility of appropriate information in the supply chain at the right time, iSURF project provides an open source Smart Product Infrastructure (SPI) based on RFID technology using EPCGlobal standards. iSURF SPI implements the EPCGlobal stack by contributing to open source Fosstrak implementation and further extends the stack via introduction of configurable business processes and event driven workflows that deliver tremendous flexibility.
In order to allow business partners to share accurate master data reliably and efficiently, iSURF provides Global Data Synchronization Service Utility (GDSSU) that is based on GS1 GDSN standard and enables partners to publish/subscribe/query master data.
During a collaborative supply chain planning process execution, exceptional events may occur which necessitate technologies for on-demand partner search and collaboration agreement. iSURF project provides Transitory Collaboration Service Utility (TCSU) for establishing transitory and dynamic collaboration agreements between trading partners.
Inter-enterprise collaboration processes should be integrated with the underlying legacy applications handling the internal planning activities; integration efforts should avoid a destructive approach. Following SOA principles, iSURF developed Legacy Wrappers implemented as Web Services to expose the existing legacy application functionalities.
Although iSURF enables a generic collaborative environment, the outcomes are demonstrated in the textile domain through the iSURF Pilot Application. Our end user, namely Fratelli Piacenza S.p.A., is a manufacturer of fine cashmere fabrics and supplier to many world-leading apparel brand manufacturers, including Boss and INCO/Zegna. iSURF Pilot Application was deployed to the premises of Piacenza and evaluated directly by the actual end-users of the system, e.g. Production Manager, Warehouse Operator, Shop Assistant.
The evaluation results revealed well-acceptance of the iSURF results by the actual end-users. The impact of the iSURF Pilot Application on Piacenza business is mainly on cost saving through:
- Automation of manual procedures
- Reduction of manual errors
- Time savings in operation
- Immediate exchange of planning information with business partners
- Increased efficacy and efficiency
- Replacing manual labour intensive tasks like goods recoding with automatic processes
- Informed management of the re-order season
iSURF results have been subject to third party evaluation as well. iSURF partners have identified key experts from various sectors including not only textile/clothing, but also data management, defence, aeronautics, oil & gas, aerospace, furniture, automotive. These experts were first provided a video explaining clearly the achievements of the iSURF Pilot Application and then they were applied questionnaires. The answers to the questionnaires represent 77% acceptance of the iSURF results, which is quite motivating for the iSURF consortium.
For further information, please take a look at the enclosed article that briefly explains iSURF pilot application and its evaluation together with the lessons learnt during the project.
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