Supply chain management meets auto-ID management: A structured approach

Nowadays, firms need to support e-business through solutions that guarantee, on the one hand, the supply chain management (SCM) and, on the other, products' identification and traceability (ID automation). These two aspects have been faced, up until now, in a separate manner and adhered to the definition of established standards. Thus, we propose an approach that allows the integration of SCM and ID-automation software architectures and, at the same time, guarantees the separation of concerns. In this paper, we also present an implementation that uses two systems: the data interchange system based on the ebXML standard and the traceability system based on the EPCglobal standard. According to this approach, we propose a preliminary implementation experience for the pharmaceutical sector.