Autor: Dieter Uckelmann

The requirements for fleet management have grown significantly over the last few years due to the development of telematics systems, car sharing and electric. Especially electric vehicles add new requirements for the management of a fleet. Therefore, fleet management needs to be adjusted, extended, or even re-designed.

Value Stream Mapping has been applied successfully in production and logistics scenarios. With the rise of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) in the context of Industry 4.0, the value-contribution of information itself is gaining importance. Therefore, the concept of Value Stream Mapping is extended to the field of information logistics. Key-processes and design variables are defined.

At BIBA - Bremer Institut für Produktion und Logistik GmbH a project was conducted for the electronic vehicle identification in cooperation with the firm J.H. Tönnjes E.A.S.T. GmbH & Co. KG. The aim of this research project was to find the optimal combination of inlay and reader for a passive RFID system in the UHF frequency band. RFID vignettes and RFID license plates produced by the Tönnjes company group were analysed and optimised throughout the tests.

To evaluate research approaches in logistics, tests are indispensable. For enhanced research in logistics worldwide well established labs could take a major role to shorten development cycles. However, often remote access to necessary resources in the different labs is not possible. In this context a new opportunity for a technology driven access to supply chain labs could be established to increase the availability and user friendliness as well as the utilization rate of existing infrastructures. In the present article the remote access through a web based interface is introduced. The system has been developed within a two year student project in collaboration with the computer science and production engineering department at the University of Bremen.

The implementation of object-identification without contact by Radio Frequency Identification technology (RFID) is in the meantime taken into consideration by many small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to enhance on the one hand their internal workflows in production and logistics and on the other hand to satisfy customer demands. However, in the last years only little or superficial knowledge of this technology has been acquired. Hence, qualified and certified training for dealing with RFID is highly necessary. Process security shall thus be guaranteed internally and uniform standards within the supply chain regarding the implementation and application of RFID, can be substantiated.