Summary: This review on reference projects, specifying reusable outputs, focuses on FP7-EcoHubs: Message-based Access Points and on ecoTAURUS. The aim of the EcoHubs project is to produce an infrastructure and a range of value added services which are driven by leading European intermodal terminal operators. The author of this review is Konstantinos Vasileiou, ILS. Coding for CORE e-library is CORE3006.

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The aim of the EcoHubs project is to produce an infrastructure and a range of value added services which are driven by leading European intermodal terminal operators. All these services will be made available through the EcoHubs Ecosystem, delivering the following innovations:

• Business innovations: Process improvements addressing gaps / weaknesses of existing practices, particularly from a collaboration perspective between terminals and their users, offering new services, such as consolidation of logistic chains and increased utilization of resources. For example, the ecoTAURus service optimizes the trucks loading and unloading of multimodal terminals, becoming a best practice for collaboration between terminals and tracking companies of the EcoHubs ecosystem.
• Technology innovations: secure connectivity infrastructure for terminal stakeholders through Access Points, and integration tools for Terminal Community creation and support. This enables the newcomers to “connect once and talk to everyone”, thus lowering the economic barriers to connectivity for budget sensitive SMEs.
• Capacity building: availability of highly cost effective solutions and freeware (Access Points, Mobile apps, best practice process and data templates for easy configuration and agility) for SME participation.

The project outcomes of relevance to CORE are the following:

The EcoHubs ecosystem: This is a Message Based Connectivity Infrastructure via Access Points acting as good example for the CORE connectivity infrastructure in WP 7. EcoHubs, the approach of the Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE), based on Access Points is utilised. As a concept, PEPPOL introduced the concept of the message-based Access Points and established a technical basis for the underlying framework and architecture – which were reused successfully in a number of projects (eMAR, COMCIS, iCargo) and were extended in EcoHubs to address its unique needs. The high flexibility, maintainability and security that this approach guarantees make it an ideal, low-risk choice for the exchange of supply chain messages among businesses in CORE, especially in the relevant tasks in WP7 (CORE Connectivity Infrastructure and Solutions Development Environment).

The Access Points are interconnected system components that provide a secure, reliable, accessible way for participation in the ecosystem, access to its value-added services, and interaction with other member businesses, without the need for expensive hardware upgrades or risky reengineering of existing IT systems. The concept of the Access Points (APs) is “connect-once – speak-to-many”, aiming to make connectivity and collaboration a simpler process for organisations, lowering the barriers to enroll.

Business collaboration and B2B is a concept starting in the 1980s with EDI messaging. Today, EDI is widely used, but it:

• poses significant barriers to budget-critical SMEs,
• requires effort in business process integration, and
• is mainly a peer to peer (P2P) connection, making the maintenance of larger communities a tedious task.

EcoHubs introduces a modern approach to integration, developing a business ecosystem for B2B connectivity, based on Access Points. In principle, the exchange of business messages in the ecosystem is similar to email exchanges: the participants connect to their specified Access Point and have to specify the recipient id (which is similar to the email address in email exchanges: a unique id that identifies each business in the ecosystem). The burden of the transmission, encryption, delivery, etc. is handled in the background from the AP infrastructure. Even transformation services can be integrated in the AP, so that conversion of the B2B electronic messages is done transparently and automatically.

Ecosystem Infrastructure Subsystems – The business ecosystem based on the connectivity infrastructure of the APs is facilitated by the following consisting subsystems:

SMP (Service Metadata Provider): The Access Point Ecosystem allows a business participant to enter, connect and transact, becoming a member of a larger Ecosystem Community. The SMP is implementing the function to locate the target of the message (recipient) and provide the valid address and protocols for establishing the communication. Therefore, the SMP component is the part of the infrastructure to provide in the form of RESTful Web Services (WS) APIs, all the required functions order to resolve final recipient’s Access Point (AP).

The EcoHubs ecosystem currently has a single, central and agreed upon SMP (Service Metadata Provider) node. Depending on the needs and the size of the CORE ecosystem, this approach can be replicated or a different one might be preferred (e.g. decentralized SMPs based on P2P protocols). All Access Points use the SMP advertised Web Services to retrieve accurate information for their message recipients’ Access Points. The SMP can be configured to be setup either on premise or in the cloud.

Access Points Service Providers: The Access Point Service Providers provide the necessary infrastructure components for the hosting of Access Points. As said previously, the Access Point Providers can be set up to be installed on premise or in the Cloud, allowing flexibility in their configuration, depending on the business preferences and policies.

The Access Point Service Providers expose LIME Web Services to users/organisations wishing to exchange messages between, via the Access Points mechanisms. Access points can be hosted in a highly configurable way, preferably on the cloud, where Access Points can be implemented in heterogeneous platforms, serving large numbers of connections and transactions.

The required hosting infrastructure of the Access Points can range from typical single ma-chine hosting, to private clouds (e.g. OpenStack), to public clouds (e.g. Amazon AWS, Azure Cloud Platform). As mentioned above, Access Points can also be hosted on premise. In case an end user/ organisation wishes not to rely on a third party Access Point in the cloud, it can host its own private Access Point capable of serving its message exchanging needs, without losing any of the benefits of being connected to the ecosystem. This can be a preferable solution for the case of CORE, where emphasis is given to the aspect of security.

Access Point Services Clients: The business ecosystem communications infrastructure has been set up to let the participants freely communicate and exchange information and business documents. Under a common scenario, an ecosystem participant will register and connect to the ecosystem via an Access Point. This process will let the participant connect its systems and thereby exchange information with the other end-users in the ecosystem.

Transformation Services: An additional feature that can be implemented in the AP infrastructure and offer significant value to participants is the automated Transformation between the various business message formats. In this case, the business partner that enters the ecosystem has to additionally provide the data mapping of the messages she uses to a common format. This common format can be Common Framework (see also Section 2) for the domain of Supply Chain, Logistics, and Transformation, as it has been tested in a number of previous EU projects and covers all communication needs in realistic pilots.

After the new entrant completes the registration in the AP ecosystem and the specification of the mapping, she can then send electronic messages to other participants in the interconnected network, without needing to know their message formats or having to change her messaging infrastructure. The AP will automatically convert twice the message: from the recipient’s format (i.e. the original message) to its Common Framework equivalent; then, from the Common Framework equivalent message to the recipient’s messaging format. Upon successful completion of the process, both the recipient and the sender businesses have exchanged B2B messages without any need to change existing IT hardware/software implementation and without knowledge of the other party’s custom formats. The transformation is handled transparently, in the AP, minimizing the barriers for seamless supply chains across Europe.

From the technical perspective, the only additional requirement is the specification of mappings, from the custom (proprietary or not) messaging formats to the Common Framework format, which acts the common denominator across the ecosystem. The standard CF messages are used to track and trace freight along its journey across transport modes and to automate the exchange of cargo-related data between stakeholders internally in the AP network. The end-users, however, only have to interact in their own formats. Thus, the use of the CF allows:

• Interoperability between Access Points, as the message exchanges among partici-pants is done using CF-defined messages (the routed messages from Access Point to Access Point are in CF format, while the messages from and to businesses are in the proprietary format of each participant).
• Interoperability between Access Points and external logistics systems, as long as all messages exchanged are mapped to their equivalent CF compliant format. This feature means that this messaging approach can be extended to unify different ecosystems.

In the case of transformation, the APs are no more message-agnostic, as they have to obviously change the message (document) content from one format to another. This prerequisite, however, is not actually restrictive for the supply chain and logistics domain, as it is expected that each participant will know beforehand the sets of messages that exchanges with the other partners of the ecosystem.

ecoTAURUS

ecoTAURuS is an innovative e-transport solution for real time truck – terminal collaboration and planning of actions to speed up and to optimize the loading and unloading process in multi-modal terminals. This new service has been designed and configured to be running on simple mobile phones, and has been supported via the European Research and Development project EcoHubs ( http://www.ecohubs.eu/ ) for the terminals of the future, in Transportation and Logistics. The original approach of the ecoTAURUS application can be reused in CORE, as a paradigm for the management of SC process optimization, even through mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablets). The usability and efficiency of ecoTAURUS solution can be followed for similar applications in the CORE ecosystem.

ecoTAURuS belongs to a new breed of terminal software services which can be seamlessly integrated with back office systems, able to connect and exchange information with systems regardless if these are made of Legacy or Web 2.0 enabled technologies. ecoTAURuS at the same time supports both process efficiency and environmental improvements.

ecoTAURuS is a service that allows stakeholders around a group of terminals (terminal and intermodal operators, trucking companies, truckers, dispatchers, etc.) to increase their effectiveness and optimize their operations through the seamless integration of truck appointments systems and the consolidation of Unit status data from multiple sources (multiple Terminal Operating Systems – TOS and Trucker mobile interfaces). The service is also bundled with complementary security, environmental and marketing services depending on the type of terminal or port.

Functionalities and Differentiators – ecoTAURUS was conceived and built based on the requirements of two terminal operators (IFB & Adria Kombi ) and provides:

• Unit Order Management: supports the retrieving, sending and providing visibility on Unit order information from multiple sources, along with identification of preferred unit loading/unloading slots to maximize the potential for direct loading/unloading.
• Integration with multiple Terminal and other Systems: supports the seamless collection of Track Appointment Reservations, Visit/Call IDs, slot availability, TOS generated events, TMS.
• Trip Order Management: supports the retrieving, updating, sending Trip Order in-formation from multiple sources.
• Trucker Mobile Interface: supports the receiving/accepting Trip Orders from multiple sources, reporting Unit Status, receiving notifications, transmitting GPS data.
• Automated Incident Notifications: provides notifications for unit delays, traffic data, terminal capacity/congestions/equipment failure through secure channels to the responsible actors/roles.
• Information Exchange/Authentication: enhances security and information protection through a single Access (Entry) Point, alleviating the routing concerns for messaging.
• Measurement: seamless connection and streaming data flows with measuring and benchmarking application for decision support, process monitoring, and strategic planning.

Benefits towards Terminal Business Drivers:

• Optimize Terminal Operations;
• Improved awareness of expected truck visits and plan/minimize own resources;
• Minimize truck queuing and required space for relocating traffic from public road network;
• Minimize/speed-up Trip Arrangement Administrative effort (reducing cut-off time);
• Improve direct loading ratio with better appointment system;
• Improve synchronisation between truck and rail scheduling;
• Improve Terminal Customer Experience;
• Expand Unit Visibility beyond terminal yard operations (also User Interface for small companies);
• Reduce waiting times, better turn-around and increased Truck Load Factor;
• Enhance Terminal Operations visibility;
• Access Point infrastructure: Low cost, easy to use information sharing; and
• Improve Terminal Public Image: Environmental – Reduce CO2 emissions

Benefits towards Trucking Business Drivers:

• Optimize Trucking Operations;
• Minimize Trip Arrangement Management Cost through easy integration with multiple TOS systems;
• Reduce waiting times, better turn-around and increased Truck Load Factor;
• Minimize cost/effort for Unit Status Collection through Trucker’s mobile interface;
• Improve Control and Customer Service;
• Enhance Unit Status Awareness; and
• Enhance Terminal Operations visibility

Related Documentation – Project Deliverables – Dissemination Level PU: Public

• CORE3006-EcoHubs D2.3 Communications Infrastructure v.1.1.pdf
• CORE3006-EcoHubs D3.2 Integrated Services Deliverable 2.0.pdf

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