The first ENOUGH demonstrator (read more about Demo 1 here) aims to show how continuous improvement is possible in a supply chain seen as a collective entity of committed participants. The demonstrator aims to improve the performance that are obtained separately on each of the supply chain case studies, involved as participants, in order to augment their sustainability dimensions range when they participate collaboratively, though autonomously and privately, into a supply chain process.
They are working based on the application of the SDS (Smart Data System), and the work is conducted mostly virtual by eliciting, extracting, and creating value from the set of separate components and stakeholders that make up a supply chain process. The products of the SDS are lifecycle-wide digital twins of a supply chain.
The goal of the Demo 1 is to express new paradigms of management and control of the supply chain in all its heterogeneous steps and complexities. This requires a rethinking of the digital transformation that is happening mainly in the context of Industry 5.0. In this sense, the food supply chain is a unique challenge as it features both technical and societal challenges in a way that is more manifest than in other sectors.
For this motivation, Demo 1 was taken as an appropriate showcase of what the new concept of SDS is going to express. The design of the demonstrator has been taken closely entangled to the developments of the SDS technology and concept, which design thinking process started from the bottom up, from the real fieldexperience and requirements of stakeholders involved in their full expertise from a selected set of other Demos.
In essence, the Demo 1 is demonstrating how the systemic and holistic approach conveyed by the SDS can provide an added value to the results obtainable when specific state of the art interventions and operational improvements are applied separately by the participants of a supply chain. Within this vision, an experimental supply chain set up have been devised which features a narration involving the owners of Demo 3, Demo 5, and Demo 11 that collaborate jointly to better express the potential of the Demo 1. This will allow collection of data and process information from a dairy plant in Austria, a fruit and vegetable plant in Belgium, and a thermal storage unit in France, which render the demonstration of the virtual supply chain grounded by real cases.
The outcome has been the first test SCE (supply chain digital entity) that is going to prove that the whole is more than the sum of the parts, due to the inherent complexity of a food supply chain process.
Currently the demo is at TRL 5, as the experiment is a laboratory one, conducted with simulated data just to verify the validity of the application and of the concept.
The upcoming work includes the introduction of a pervasive system of decision making that crosses many levels of intervention from the top to the bottom of the operations. It will be based on HMT (holonic management tree) coupled with new insights in the application of mixed reality.
Figure 1: Example of short-term decision-making interfaces for SDS Participants in the Demo1
Figure 2: Example of long-term decision-making interface for SDS Participants in the Demo1; showing the history of CO2 savings through different iterations of a supply chain entity.
Author: Massimiliano Pirani, UNIVPM, Marche Polytechnic University
