The SPIDER-WIN Project - Developing a Supply Information Dynamic Exchange and Control by Web-based Interaction Network

Main Goals

In many European regions (e.g. Emilia Romagna, Basque, Mazovia), SMEs are part of intense customer-supplier networks. These companies survive, only, because of the excellent skills of their employees and the extreme flexibility of their processes. Co-ordination mechanisms are poor, and the extremely lean organisations do not allow for any substantial IT overhead. SCM tools are too complex, expensive and personnel-intensive for these enterprises.

The goal of SPIDER-WIN is to achieve efficient, simple and context-aware SME co-operation with low-level local software requirements and adapted to the typical availability and quality of resource data in very small enterprises, focussed on the exchange of order status changes. As a value added service, an ASP platform will be developed which allows context-aware handling of orders and resource requests.

Key Issues

SPIDER-WIN will make available a communication tool that will change completely the management of multi-tier manufacturing networks, but will also require a huge exchange of information within the manufacturing network, partially generated by legacy systems of the network players. Interoperability is a key issue, and currently available electronic exchange information systems have several problems in tightly managing frequent and large information exchange. On the other hand recent standards like XML require that exchanged information (in terms of Mbytes) are larger and larger with respect to previous standards. Furthermore, manufacturing networks frequently exchange technical drawings, which can be very storage intensive. These new loosely coupled technologies will have a disruptive effect on web based application where the exchange of information is critical.

Technical Approach

The approach includes three field studies in different European regions, providing the potentially available data as well as the related quantified effort and economical benefits. Existing enterprise modelling tools and methodologies will be adapted to efficiently grasp the information from companies which are very small, informally organised, and maintain extremely fuzzy data, only. Mechanisms and algorithms will be worked out, which (a) identify profit potentials within the networked partners, (b) improve production planning reliability by efficiently connecting and evaluating the fuzzy data available from suppliers and setting up suitable alarm mechanisms and (c) give draft estimates of possible delivery horizons immediately, i.e. without any interaction of the small company's owner in person. ASP technologies will provide these methods in small-companies' environments, with low-rate modem lines, simple IT competence and extremely low IT budgets.

Expected Achievements

1) The basic innovation is the SPIDER-WIN SCM model. The SPIDER-WIN approach is revolutionary, as the full supply chain is managed through one application shared within the whole network and all along the supply chain, without forcing the network partners to apply a common ERP system. Networks will be modelled in terms of communicational model (and not product model). Therefore, each company will be allowed to have its own organisational internal model and its own legacy system (maybe very small and cheap in case of very small companies), but contemporary they will be allowed to communicate with different partners through one unique interface.

2) The second important innovation refers to the development of innovative context aware algorithms (Integration Programmable System). The innovative modelling approach presented at point (1) allows to create communication models where the information flow is determined by the proper model. Each single information package, during its cross-enterprise life, will be characterised by a status. This variable can't be managed by the different players' legacy systems without unacceptable effort.

Therefore, when a player decides to update an information in the system, e.g.: a delivery date, he/she has the right to do it without knowing the status of that information: the supplier could have accepted that order or not, he could have generated respective orders to the lower tiers or even sent the requested goods, already. The action which SPIDER-WIN has to perform when the update information is uploaded depends on the status of that information in that moment. For the industrial sectors addressed by SPIDER-WIN, this is a key issue towards the Single European Electronic Market.

3) One of the SPIDER-WIN key issues is interoperability. A huge exchange of information coming from different legacy systems is expected. The SPIDER-WIN approach, based on the modelling of a network communicational modelling platform independent of a product model, requires the development of a completely new XML based framework for supporting interoperability among heterogeneous applications.

4) The management of communication within multi-tier networks requires the development of an innovative propagation mechanism (the Events Propagation Engine). It has to take into account the rights of its player and to allow different views depending on levels and roles.

5) A Prediction Monitor will be developed, incorporating innovative self-adaptive algorithms for the prediction of expected events like delivery delays or lead-time deviation.

6) The web based SPIDER-WIN platform will be developed in the Java language, making use of a RDBMS and a commercial application server, with quite consolidated technologies.

for more information: http://www.spider-win.de/spider-win.htm

Project Contact

Markus Rabe

Head of Department, Project Manager