Agent-based model for managing composite product information

Abstract

The importance of product information management during the whole lifetime of the product has increased due to the technical sophistication of products as well as stricter governmental regulations for lifecycle management. Just sending the relevant product information downstream in the supply chain does not solve the challenges of product information management of complex products due to difficulties in updating the information and a risk of information overflow in the supply chain. This article describes an agent-based information management model that can be used for managing the information of complex products at a component level in a distributed manner. Further the paper presents an information management platform that can achieve information management requirements by using seven distinct messages.

Enriching Product Information During the Product Lifecycle

“…However, the BOM is usually representing product information on a product-type or product-variant level rather than on a product-item level. Therefore the classical BOM is not sufficient for managing dynamic product information, where parts of the product item have individual properties and where parts can be changed during the product lifecycle (Främling, et al, 2006).…”

Advantages and New Applications of DHT-Based Discovery Services in EPCglobal Network

“…For an ID@URI to be a GUPI, the ID part should be unique for the corresponding URI. In the DIALOG system every product is implemented as a software agent (Nwana, 1996), and the information of each of them is accessed and updated through methods in the product agent interface (Främling et al, 2006). These interface methods are as follows: update() and getProductInformation(), which are used to append and retrieve information, respectively, and getCompositeInformation(), which relates to managing component hierarchies.…”

“…It is there that all the information associated to that physical object is stored. Nowadays, several approaches are used to implement this connection, such as the EPCglobal Network (Armenio et al, 2009) developed by the Auto-ID consortium, the DIALOG system (Främling et al, 2006) developed at the Helsinki University of Technology and the World Wide Article Information (WWAI) system 1 proposed by Trackway. The EPCglobal Network stands out among the rest because in 2003 it was authorized as a Global Standards I (GS1).…”

A new closed-loop PLM Standard for mass products

“…Focusing here more on the identification problem, the present model is compliant, at least in a conceptual viewpoint, with the most common traceability and identification systems, in view of a potential wide acceptance and implementation of the PROMISE approach. The Dialog System, developed by the Helsinki University of Technology (Kärkkäinen et al, 2003a;Kärkkäinen et al, 2003b;Främling et al, 2006), the WWAI-World Wide Article Information concept (http://www.wwai.org) and the AUTO-ID EPCGlobal proposal (Cole and Engels, 2005;Soylemezoglu et al, 2006), are just some of these existing approaches.…”