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.