detecting epcis exceptions in linked traceability streams across supply chain business processes

SEMANTiCS, 4th September 2014, Leipzig

Detecting EPCIS exceptions in linkedtraceability streams across supply chain

business processes

Monika Solankihttps://w3id.org/people/msolanki

@nimonika

Aston Business SchoolAston University, Birmingham, UK

https://w3id.org/people/msolanki


Broad Outline

Motivation

Background

Ontologies

Detecting exceptions

Conclusions

[email protected], @nimonika Detecting EPCIS exceptions in supply chains


Visibility* in supply chains“Visibility is the ability to know exactly where things are at anypoint in time, or where they have been, and why”.

Critical to achieving visibility in the end-to-end supply chainis collaboration between trading partners.Successful collaboration largely depends on the ease andtimeliness with which real-time process and productknowledge can be shared between trading partners andutilised in decision making.

*http://www.gs1.org/docs/GS1_SupplyChainVisibility_WhitePaper.pdf


http://www.gs1.org/docs/GS1_SupplyChainVisibility_WhitePaper.pdf

http://www.gs1.org/docs/GS1_SupplyChainVisibility_WhitePaper.pdf


Requirements: Healthcare supply chainsDrug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA)

The Drug Quality and Security Act (DQSA), was signedinto law by President Obama on November 27, 2013.The track-and-trace provisions, DSCSA (Title II of theDQSA), outlines critical steps to build an electronic,interoperable system to identify and trace certainprescription drugs as they are distributed in the U.S.The system will facilitate the exchange of information at theindividual package level about where a drug has been inthe supply chain.

http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/

DrugIntegrityandSupplyChainSecurity/

DrugSupplyChainSecurityAct/


http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/DrugIntegrityandSupplyChainSecurity/DrugSupplyChainSecurityAct/




Healthcare supply chainsGS1 standards* for Traceability

GS1: a neutral, not-for-profit organizationprovides global standards to improve the efficiency andvisibility in supply chains.GS1 US Secure Supply Chain Task Force: preliminaryimplementation guidelines* for applying GS1 Standards toU.S. Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Business Processes.Core GS1 standards: EPCIS 1.1 & CBV 1.1

*http://www.gs1.org/healthcare/standards*www.gs1us.org/RxGuideline


http://www.gs1.org/healthcare/standards

www.gs1us.org/RxGuideline


Electronic Product CodeRFID tags/Barcodes enable the capture of the identity andlocation of physical items and goods as they move alongthe supply chain.The Electronic Product Code (EPC)* provides productswith unique, serialised identities.Encoded on data carriers: Active/Passive RFID tags,Barcodes, Human Readable Number and more.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Product_Code


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Product_Code

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Product_Code


EPCIS v1.1 and CBV v1.1Electronic Product Code Information Services (EPCIS)*:ratified EPCglobal standard that provides a set ofspecifications for the syntactic capture and informalsemantic interpretation of EPC based product information.Events as abstractions for traceability.Core Business Vocabulary (CBV): companion* standard toEPCIS.CBV supplements EPCIS by defining the structure ofvocabularies and specific values for the vocabularyelements.

*http://www.gs1.org/gsmp/kc/epcglobal/epcis*http://www.gs1.org/gsmp/kc/epcglobal/cbv


http://www.gs1.org/gsmp/kc/epcglobal/epcis

http://www.gs1.org/gsmp/kc/epcglobal/cbv


Pedigrees

Most widely prevalent in the pharmaceutical industry.Pedigree (e-pedigree) is an audit trail that records the pathand ownership of a drug as it moves through the supplychain.Each stakeholder involved in the manufacture ordistribution of the drug adds information to the pedigree.“Event-based Pedigree”: utilises EPCglobal’s EPCIS 1.1specification for capturing events in the supply chain andgenerating pedigrees based on a relevant subset of thecaptured events.

cf. COLD, DeRiVE @ ISWC 2013



Event-based Linked Pedigrees

Datasets described and accessed using linked dataprinciples.Encapsulate EPCIS event-based knowledge required totrace and track products in supply chains on a Web scale.Facilitate the interlinking of a variety of related and relevantdata, i.e., product master data with event data and otherpedigrees.Enable sharing of knowledge among partners as productsphysically flow downstream or upstream in the supplychain.

cf. COLD, DeRiVE @ ISWC 2013



Healthcare supply chains

Flow of knowledge via linked pedigrees (Abstraction)



Traceability data validation

Runtime monitoring in supply chains



EPCIS(1.1) Events: An informal Intuition

Event data (continuous) and Master data(static/background).Event data persisted (Information dimensions):What(product(s)), Where(location), When(time), andWhy(business step and status) of events (productmovement) occurring in any supply chain.Event data model made available as an EPCglobal baseXML schema*.

*http://www.gs1.org/gsmp/kc/epcglobal/epcis/epcis_1_1-standard-20140520


http://www.gs1.org/gsmp/kc/epcglobal/epcis/epcis_1_1-standard-20140520

http://www.gs1.org/gsmp/kc/epcglobal/epcis/epcis_1_1-standard-20140520


EPCIS(1.1) Events: An informal Intuition

One generic and four specific physical event types

For this talk,EPCISEvent: the generic EPCIS event.ObjectEvent: an event that occurred as a result of someaction on one or more entities denoted by EPCs.“This list of objects was observed entering DC #9 at10:01AM, during Receiving”.AggregationEvent: an event that happened to one or moreEPC-denoted entities that are physically aggregated.“This list of objects was just Palletized with this Pallet ID atPalletizer #27 at 12:32PM”.



EPCIS Data model components

EPCsTimeRead PointsBusiness LocationBusiness stepsDispositionTransaction typesActionQuantities and measurementsSources and DestinationsILMD (Instance Lot Master Data)



EPCIS Exceptions

Typical examples(e1) Pedigree serial number discrepancy(e2) product inference problem - the inability to infer aboutproducts contained in an outer container withoutdisaggregation using pedigree information(e3) quantity inference problem - the inability to derive thetotal quantity of items packed in an outer container withoutdisaggregation using pedigree information(e4) missing or incorrect containment hierarchy betweenitems and their containers - source of counterfeits.(e5) incomplete pedigree data(e6) pedigree data with broken chains, i.e., missingintermediate stakeholder pedigree information.



Modelling EPCIS Exceptions

An exception is an event that happens in the supply chain thatinterferes with or is not part of the expected flow of artifacts andgoods.

Requirememts:A formal representation of various kinds of exception thatcould be possibly generated.A generalisation hierarchy based on the exceptions types.A conceptual schema for capturing the attributes andrelationships of an EPCIS exception.



EEM*: The EPCIS Event Model

Focuses on a tight conformance with the EPCIS 1.1standard and Simplicity.Explicitly defines relationships with CBV entities throughCBVVocab*.EEM has been mapped* to PROV-O*.

*http://purl.org/eem#*www.w3.org/ns/prov-o*http://purl.org/cbv#

*http://fispace.aston.ac.uk/ontologies/eem_prov.html


http://purl.org/eem#

www.w3.org/ns/prov-o

http://purl.org/cbv#

http://fispace.aston.ac.uk/ontologies/eem_prov.html


EEM Modules



EEM Entities: Axiomatisation



Hierarchy of EPCIS Exceptions



Axiomatisation requirements

Three major activities: detection/identification, notificationand handling.Notification and handling: dependent on the type ofexception that is detected.As every detected exception must be notified immediately,an exception event must be followed by a notification event.Exceptions arise as part of a business process executing aspecific business step and associated with a specificbusiness process location.The pedigree that caused the exception needs to bereported.



EPCISExceptionEvent: Axiomatisation



Detecting EPCIS Exceptions (1/3)

Exception e(4) - ParentChildAggregationException:Missing or incorrect containment hierarchy between items andtheir containers.Step 1:Select EPCs from every EPCISEvent where the business stepis “packing” and the action is “ADD”.

Query 1SELECT ?epc1 WHERE {?s1 a eem:EPCISEvent;

eem:hasBusinessStepType ?x1;eem:action eem:ADD;eem:associatedWithEPCList ?y1.

?y1 <http://purl.org/co#element> ?epc1.FILTER(contains(str(?x1), "packing"))

}



Detecting EPCIS Exceptions (2/3)

Exception e(4) - ParentChildAggregationException:Missing or incorrect containment hierarchy between items andtheir containers.Step 2:Check if the items that are part of the event have indeed beencommissioned in an earlier ObjectEvent.

Query 2ASK WHERE {?s2 a eem:ObjectEvent;

eem:hasBusinessStepType ?x2;eem:action eem:ADD;eem:associatedWithEPCList ?y2.

?y2 <http://purl.org/co#element> ?epc1.FILTER(contains(str(?x2), "commissioning"))

}


Detecting EPCIS Exceptions (3/3)Step 3:When the ASK query returns a “No”, aParentChildAggregationException exception isdetected.

Query 3: Construct an exception graphCONSTRUCT{<excepEventURI> a

eem:ParentChildAggregationException;eem:eventOccurredAt "timeLiteral"xsd:datetime;eem:associatedBusinessStep cbv:packing;....other triples about the exceptiondul:directlyFollows <SetOfAggregationEvents>.

}CONSTRUCT{<notificationEventURI> a

eem:EPCISExceptionNotificationEvent;eem:eventOccurredAt "timeLiteral"xsd:datetime;

eem:directlyFollowsEvent <excepEventURI>.


Implementing EEM: LinkedEPCIS library

EEM is a complex data model.Non trivial to generate class assertions and complexqueries without knowing the structure of the model andnomenclature of the entities.LinkedEPCIS* - an open source Java API to,

Encourage the uptake of EEM among EPCIS conformingorganisations and industriesEase the creation of EEM instancesFacilitate querying over the instantiated datasets

* https://github.com/nimonika/LinkedEPCIS


https://github.com/nimonika/LinkedEPCIS


Interlinking EPCIS Event data



Exception Detection Architecture



EvaluationEPCIS Event volumes

Data Sources: Sample EPCIS relational data, Greyliterature, interviews, surveys, EPCIS expertsAssumption: an average rate of production as 6 days perweek and 10 hours per day,Commissioning events generated based on the number ofitems ranging from 24,000 to 102,000 per day orapproximately 40 to 170 per minute.Aggregation and shipping events generated consideringaggregated items ranging from 100 to 500 (increments of100) per case and number of cases per pallet ranging from20 to 100 (increments of 20).Tumbling window sizes of 3, 5, 7 and 10 hours respectively.



Evaluation: Results



ConclusionsFrequent occurrences of exceptions in supply chain isinevitable due to the complexity of the underlyingoperations.Their timely detection offers great practical advantages,reduces delays in meeting order fulfillment deadlines andprovides huge economical benefits across the supplychain.Proposed a unified approach for the modelling andrepresentation of exceptions occurring in supply chainsgoverned by GS1’s event-based EPCIS specification andlinked pedigrees.Proposed a hierarchy of EPCIS exceptions and extendedEEM with an exceptions module.Evaluated and exemplified our approach within thepharmaceutical supply chain.



Further informationM. Solanki and C. Brewster. Consuming Linked data in Supply Chains:Enabling data visibility via Linked Pedigrees. COLD2013 at ISWC,volume Vol-1034. CEUR-WS.org proceedings, 2013.

M. Solanki and C. Brewster. Representing Supply Chain Events on theWeb of Data. DeRiVE at ISWC. CEUR-WS.org proceedings, 2013.

M. Solanki and C. Brewster. EPCIS event based traceability inpharmaceutical supply chains via automated generation of linkedpedigrees. ISWC 2014. Springer-Verlag.

M. Solanki and C. Brewster. Modelling and Linking transformations inEPCIS governing supply chain business processes. EC-Web 2014.Springer-LNBIP.

M. Solanki and C. Brewster. Detecting EPCIS Exceptions in linkedtraceability streams across supply chain business processes.SEMANTiCS 2014. ACM-ICPS.

http://windermere.aston.ac.uk/~monika/ontologies.html

http://windermere.aston.ac.uk/~monika/publication.html


http://windermere.aston.ac.uk/~monika/ontologies.html

http://windermere.aston.ac.uk/~monika/publication.html

detecting epcis exceptions in linked traceability streams across supply chain business processes

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