Intelligent Products.docVIP

Intelligent Products: A survey Gerben G. Meyera, , , Kary Fr?mlingb, and Jan Holmstr?mc, aDepartment of Business ICT, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands bDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 5500, FIN-02015 TKK HUT, Finland cDepartment of Industrial Management and Engineering, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 5500, FIN-02015 TKK HUT, Finland Available online 15 January 2009. Abstract This paper presents an overview of the field of Intelligent Products. As Intelligent Products have many facets, this paper is mainly focused on the concept behind Intelligent Products, the technical foundations, and the achievable practical goals of Intelligent Products. A novel classification of Intelligent Products is introduced, which distinguishes between three orthogonal dimensions. Furthermore, the technical foundations in the areas of automatic identification and embedded processing, distributed information storage and processing, and agent-based systems are discussed, as well as the achievable practical goals in the contexts of manufacturing, supply chains, asset management, and product life cycle management. Keywords: Intelligent Products; Product lifecycle; Software agents; Supply chains; RFID Article Outline 1. Introduction 1.1. Background 1.2. Paper outline 2. What are Intelligent Products 2.1. Definitions of Intelligent Products 2.1.1. McFarlane et al. 2.1.2. K?rkk?inen et al. 2.1.3. Vent? 2.2. Classification of Intelligent Products 2.2.1. Level of intelligence 2.2.2. Location of intelligence 2.2.3. Aggregation level of intelligence 2.2.4. Classification model 3. Technologies enabling Intelligent Products 3.1. Automatic Identification and embedded processing 3.2. Distributed information storage and processing 3.2.1. EPC Global 3.2.2. ID@URI 3.2.3. WWAI 3.3. Agent-based platforms 3.3.1. Portal platforms 3.3.2. Emb