A Logistics Enterprise Epcis Prototype System Design And Implementation

The EPCglobal standards and specifications define a uniform framework of information capturing, storage and access of business trades for the global EPC (Electronic Product Code) network. The EPCIS (EPC Information Service) system is the core component of the global EPC network, and it is responsible for capturing the dynamic information of business trade items in logistic activities. The dynamic information is represented as four kinds of EPCIS events as defined by the EPCglobal standards and specifications, which are object events, aggregation events, quantity events and transaction events. Inspired by the motivation of showing the functional principle of EPCIS system’s capturing of these four kinds of events on the global EPC network, and of emphasizing the great value of EPCIS system for the logistic supply chain management in global trades, this research is launched to design and implement an EPCIS prototype system accordant to the EPCglobal standards and specifications, having a background of typical warehouse business model of a logistic enterprise.This prototype system is designed into three modules to implement, which from the bottom to the top are simulation environment module, event capturing module and event query module. Based on the EPCglobal Tag Data Standard, the simulation environment module implements the simulations of trade items, RFID readers and logistic activities. Based on The Application Level Events (ALE) Specification and EPC Information Services (EPCIS) Specification, the event capturing module implements the functionalities of the capturing and repository of EPCIS events. Based on web technologies such as Servlet and AJAX, the event query module implements the functionalities of the query of EPCIS events. The EPCIS Specification specifies that the EPCIS event data should include business environment information, so this research carries out an idea that the business environment information be configured in order that they are written into the event data when events are captured by the EPCIS system.The running results of this prototype system meet the expectations. In other words, this prototype system achieves to simulate logistic activities in logistic enterprises’ repository businesses, to capture EPCIS events according to EPCglobal standards and specifications, to query EPCIS events captured.The EPCIS events captured by this prototype system support the fact that the EPCIS system is incredibly effective in automatically, real-time and finely processing information in RFID equipped logistic supply chain, and that the global EPC network based on EPCglobal standards and specifications will bring great benefits to global business trades and cooperations between modern enterprises.