Automated management of assets based on RFID triggered alarm messages

Asset management has long been considered as an important issue in enterprises. With the maturing of the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, automated management of assets (particularly for mobile ones) in an enterprise using RFID becomes practical. We have developed a RFID-based Asset Management System (RAMS) for a large telecommunication enterprise and this paper details how we maintain the whole life-cycle of assets from their acquisition, transfer, maintenance, audit taking, to retirement. Our system also displays spatial information of assets on an electronic geographical map using Web-based Geographical Information System (WebGIS) technology. Further asset security is improved by automated notification of asset movement and malfunction alarm through Short Message System (SMS). To improve the sending time of the alarm SMSs that have high priority, we also develop a Maximum Position First (MPF) speed-up algorithm for their scheduling. Our initial deployment shows that our system can improve the availability of assets and reduce the asset management cost dramatically.

[1]  Dickson K. W. Chiu,et al.  Automated Management of Assets Based on RFID , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Sensor Networks, Ubiquitous, and Trustworthy Computing (sutc 2008).

[2]  Lifang Peng,et al.  Upgrade ERP from C/S to B/S based on Web service , 2005, Proceedings of ICSSSM '05. 2005 International Conference on Services Systems and Services Management, 2005..

[3]  Charles Poirier,et al.  RFID Strategic Implementation and ROI: A Practical Roadmap to Success , 2006 .

[4]  T. C. Edwin Cheng,et al.  Mobile commerce integrated with RFID technology in a container depot , 2007, Decis. Support Syst..

[5]  Luo Yingwei,et al.  Design of a framework for multi-user/application oriented WebGIS services , 2001, Proceedings 2001 International Conference on Computer Networks and Mobile Computing.

[6]  Ahmed K. Elmagarmid,et al.  A Multidatabase Transaction Model for InterBase , 1990, VLDB.

[7]  Umeshwar Dayal,et al.  Organizing long-running activities with triggers and transactions , 1990, SIGMOD '90.

[8]  Amit P. Sheth,et al.  Specifying and Enforcing Intertask Dependencies , 1993, VLDB.

[9]  M. Attaran.  RFID: an enabler of supply chain operations , 2007 .

[10]  J. Enderle,et al.  Passive RFID Asset Monitoring System in Hospital Environments , 2006, Proceedings of the IEEE 32nd Annual Northeast Bioengineering Conference.

[11]  Samir Chatterjee,et al.  A Taxonomy for RFID , 2006, Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'06).

[12]  Manfred Reichert,et al.  The ADEPT WfMS Project at the University of Ulm , 1998 .

[13]  Harry K. H. Chow,et al.  Integration of web‐based and RFID technology in visualizing logistics operations – a case study , 2007 .

[14]  Shing-Chi Cheung,et al.  Alerts in mobile healthcare applications: requirements and pilot study , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine.

[15]  William Stallings,et al.  Wireless Communications & Networks , 2002 .

[16]  Sang Hyuk Son,et al.  The case for feedback control real-time scheduling , 1998, Proceedings of 11th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems. Euromicro RTS'99.

[17]  G. Barber,et al.  An analysis of using EPCglobal class-1 generation-2 RFID technology for wireless asset management , 2005, MILCOM 2005 - 2005 IEEE Military Communications Conference.

[18]  Hee-Seung Kim,et al.  Development of web-based diabetic patient management system using short message service (SMS). , 2004, Diabetes research and clinical practice.

[19]  Dickson K. W. Chiu,et al.  Improving the Response Time of Business Processes: An Alert-Based Analytical Approach , 2006, Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'06).

[20]  Kamalakar Karlapalem,et al.  Speeding up electronic commerce activities using CapBasED-AMS , 2000, Proceedings Second International Workshop on Advanced Issues of E-Commerce and Web-Based Information Systems. WECWIS 2000.

[21]  Marco Spuri,et al.  How to Integrate Precedence Constraints and Shared Resources in Real-Time Scheduling , 1994, IEEE Trans. Computers.

[22]  Fabio Casati,et al.  Semantic Analysis of Business Process Executions , 2002, EDBT.

[23]  Gunnar Stefansson,et al.  Mobile RFID — A Case from Volvo on Innovation in SCM , 2006, Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'06).

[24]  Mark A. Buckner,et al.  MICLOG RFID tag program enables total asset visibility , 2002, MILCOM 2002. Proceedings.

[25]  Angappa Gunasekaran,et al.  Information technology and systems justification: A review for research and applications , 2006, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[26]  Dennis Viehland,et al.  The Future of Radio Frequency Identification , 2007, J. Theor. Appl. Electron. Commer. Res..

[27]  Amit P. Sheth,et al.  Specification and Execution of Transactional Workflows , 1995, Modern Database Systems.

[28]  Simson L. Garfinkel,et al.  RFID: Applications, Security, and Privacy , 2005 .