Go with the Flow - Design of Cloud Logistics Service Blueprints

Abstract

Abstract-By adopting principles of cloud computing to the logistics domain the paradigm of Cloud Logistics is derived. It appears to be a promising paradigm in order to evolve logistics into being more flexible and collaborative. Yet, appropriate concepts that enable the cloud logistics paradigm are missing. In the paper, existing body of literature is reviewed and a definition and a framework of cloud logistics is given. Further, service blueprinting is combined with domain engineering and general morphological analysis in order to create a suitable method for designing cloud oriented service blueprints. Those are focusing on domain-specific flows and transformations enabling cloud oriented business collaboration. The method is applied to the logistics domain and a cloud logistics service blueprint is designed. Finally, the concept is evaluated with real use cases from logistics service providers.