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READING, UK
18-JAN-2007 01:00 AM
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) holds the promise
of revolutionizing the supply chain. By integrating real world data about physical
assets with information systems, companies can more accurately track assets,
monitor key performance indicators and automate business processes. For logistics
providers, RFID not only gives them greater visibility into their operations
thus allowing them to make better decisions based on real-time information,
but it can benefit their customers as well through improved service and response
times. Schenker, one of the world's leading providers of integrated logistics
services, realised that in order to stay ahead of its competition it needed
to respond to changing business events in real-time and to aggressively seek
ways of exploiting this emerging technology.
With annual sales of 8.9 billion euros, 42,000 employees
and about 1,100 offices around the world, Schenker is one of the world's leading
providers of integrated logistics services, offering land operations, air and
sea freight as well as comprehensive logistics solutions and global supply chain
management from a single source. Schenker is a part of DB Logistics, the Transportation
and Logistics Division of Deutsche Bahn AG.
"We realised that we needed to develop top-drawer
RFID-based solutions in order to improve the service we could give our customers,"
said Dr. Helmut Faerber, Senior Vice President Corporate IT Management, Schenker
AG, Essen. "Within our global supply chain, our goal was to be able to
connect any type of device to any type of logistics application in any location
using a single, centralised infrastructure."
In order to achieve this goal, Schenker turned to Oracle
for both business partnership and technology solutions. Oracle teamed up with
T-Systems as the hosting partner and TBN, a local RFID system integration company,
to design a solution to address Schenker's needs. For the first phase, this
team implemented a centralized RFID event-monitoring infrastructure using the
Oracle® SOA Suite with integration to the existing SAP Logistics Execution
System. RFID data is captured and filtered by Oracle Sensor Edge Server and
dispatched back to a central data repository. The workflow to deal with the
incoming data is orchestrated by Oracle BPEL Process Manager. This solution
gives Schenker the means to showcase their RFID-capabilities to customers and
can scale to eventually tag and track thousands of pallets and other units.
"With the help of the Oracle platform we have
implemented, we are now able to provide Schenker's diverse, global service areas
with a consistent infrastructure," continued Dr. Faerber. "This means
that we can react dynamically and flexibly to future process and customer requirements."
Based upon the success of the initial work, Schenker
is now looking at a number of other RFID related projects, including trailer-tracking
for Schenker's internal operations and the usage of the technology in the area
of sea-freight-containers
In addition, both Schenker and Oracle are driving the
standardisation of RFID in the market and are members of the standards organisations
EPC Global and GS1 Germany.
About Oracle
Oracle is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information
about Oracle, visit our Web site at: http://www.oracle.com
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