Apriso Adds Major RFID, EPC Capabilities To Offering

04/14/2004

Apriso Corporation, a provider of real-time, event-driven enterprise applications software, has announced what it says is “major, new functionality for its FlexNet 2003 suite that provides enterprises with the world’s first turnkey platform for integrating radio frequency ID (RFID) and electronic product code (EPC) capabilities directly into existing or new real-time operational processes.”

Apriso offered these details:

In particular, companies may, for the first time, generate actionable business information and adjust workflow processes by location, identification, or movement of any product or item tagged with RFID tags simply by describing the relevant process flows and desired RFID interfaces to an event-driven, operational execution platform. Benefits range from leaner, more accurate operational processes to entirely new business models.

“The true promise of RFID technology comes from its capability to precisely report not only the unique identification, but also the physical location of any tagged item in inventory,” said Nelson M. Nones, CPIM, vice president and chief products officer of Apriso Corporation. “Being able to sense the location – and with event-driven applications software such as FlexNet – the real-time movement of any desired asset or piece of inventory in the supply, production or distribution network not only gives an enterprise unprecedented visibility and control of its operations, but also the opportunity to implement entirely new, high-leverage processes that were previously inconceivable. Such a capability is particularly important for companies that wish to evolve to demand-driven, adaptive enterprises such as Dell or Wal-Mart.”

RFID technology enables products of any complexity to be “tagged” with a tiny electronic device – often a chip – that can uniquely identify the product – either generically, or down to a serial number. But unlike items tagged with the familiar UPC or “barcode” that is read by a nearby scanner, RFID-tagged devices may be queried via radio technology wherever they happen to be, within range. This means, for example, that individual items can be precisely located, even when packed three deep in one of 36 cases on a shrink-wrapped pallet, which is itself buried among thousands of others in a warehouse. It is this location in space, defined by global or “geodetic” coordinates of latitude, longitude and elevation (e.g., as used by GPS) that makes it possible for the first time to conceive of and implement entire new classes of real-time systems for receiving, warehousing, fulfillment, or other such applications.

FlexNet is the ideal business applications platform to create such systems, and perfectly matched to RFID’s potential, commented Nones. “Native FlexNet is a unique suite of event-driven, collaborative process-execution applications that give enterprises real-time, fine-grained control of and visibility into any or all of their supply, production or distribution processes,” he explained. “It is the first, and currently the only business application suite that was designed from the ground up to provide actionable information and workflow instructions at any location or in any process step based upon real-time events occurring anywhere else.”

Since the positioning and identification of an item in time and space is essentially an “event”, he explained, FlexNet accommodates RFID naturally and natively, requiring additional functionality principally to support the emerging RFID standards. These include Electronic Product Code (EPC) tag data specifications, object name services, and EPC information services that enable tagged items to be identified and described through Web service software applications over the Internet.

In an actual FlexNet/RFID deployment, he explained, user-defined process flows that describe the context of each RFID application are easily created by an enterprise’s own personnel. Using these process descriptions, FlexNet provides turnkey integration between any standards-compliant RFID solution and the broad and growing family of collaborative FlexNet real-time, event-driven applications. The net result, said Nones is that an RFID deployment that includes new process flows of unprecedented flexibility can be accomplished, often in a matter of weeks.

The new functionality in FlexNet is being delivered as a software upgrade to FlexNet 2003. Although there are nearly 60 functional enhancements in the release, its main focus is end-to-end support of EPC, and RFID standards including the Savant, as published by EPC Global, the successor to MIT’s Auto ID Center.

One of the of the standard EPC Global requirements is for a “middleware” layer – called “Savant” – which sits between RFID location-sensing devices on the one hand, and business applications such as FlexNet, on the other. The Savant middleware, which interacts with the underlying RFID data generation layer via a published protocol, is tasked to perform operations such as data capture, data monitoring and filtering, and data transmission, with the goal of simplifying and rationalizing potentially massive amounts of RFID-generated data for intelligent use by the business applications.

FlexNet does not require any third-party middleware layer, as the requisite Savant functionality is built in. FlexNet can “speak” to the underlying RFID data-collection layer directly using the Savant protocols, perform the necessary data monitoring and aggregation, and can, using the innate FlexNet process-based, event-driven model, dispatch tasks and business intelligence to anywhere it is required, including to classical top-down applications such as ERP. “There is no better or faster way to deploy RFID,” said Nones.

As a case in point, International Paper recently disclosed that FlexNet forms the software foundation of a first-of-its-kind RFID warehouse tracking system at its Texarkana, Texas warehouse. FlexNet's Web-services-based warehousing and inventory management applications have been integrated with International Paper's RFID inventory location application to provide real-time workflow instructions to IP’s materials handling personnel.

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