SmartProduct: a prototype platform for product monitoring-as-a-service, leveraging IoT technologies and the EPCIS standard

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) technologies have received significant attention in recent years by encompassing a set of technologies that enable a variety of heterogeneous physical objects, called things, to interact and communicate through efficient networking protocols. These technologies have already been used in several domains such as in manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, etc. Another domain in which IoT can be applicable and useful, is that of supply chain tracing, where products are monitored throughout the whole supply chain. IoT data collection can enable the proliferation of applications, which are able to track environmental-related information per product (e.g. storage conditions), and combine them together with traceability data in order to provide full product monitoring services.Traditional supply chain tracing methods (e.g. product tracing, storage conditions' monitoring, transport vehicles used, etc.) involve costly and error-prone procedures, as human involvement is often required. Severe fragmentation is also possible, as the various stakeholders involved (producers, distributors, retailers), do not use interoperable technologies and standards.To overcome these limitations, we propose a flexible and secure prototype platform that leverages IoT technologies, jointly with the Electronic Product Code Information Service (EP-CIS) standard. The IoT software/hardware modules of the platform are used to collect IoT data (i.e. geographical location, ambient temperature, humidity, etc.), while the EPCIS-based software collects and records conventional supply chain traceability data (e.g. type of product manufactured, product loaded/unloaded into/from a truck, product transformed to another product, etc.). A rich RESTful API with strong authentication/authorisation mechanisms is used to offer Product-Monitoring-as-a-Service (PMaaS) to third-party applications.