Heineken has started a trial of an SOA-based system to
track the location of 10 cargo container shipments of beer en route
from Europe to the US in real time.
The project, called ‘The Living Beer Lab’, has seen the brewer
deploy IBM’s Websphere platform to link distributed data sources
rather than build a large central database in order to share
real-time information with international shipping company,
Safmarine, and customs authorities in the UK, the Netherlands and
the US.
The aim is to provide a paperless trail of the beer’s journey
from Europe through US customs and into Heineken’s distribution
centre. In the past, up to 30 documents had to be filled in for
each journey, but the hope is that the move will significantly cut
the amount of time that the beer is in transit.
The containers are tracked using a mixture of satellites and
cellular base stations to establish exactly where the cargo is
located.
The pilot project is part of the Information Technology for
Analysis and Intelligent Design for E-government research project,
which is being funded by the European Commission in attempt to
reduce security worries and tax fraud. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
is coordinating the initiative and will develop best-practice
guidelines that can be shared across the European Union.
Dr Yao-Hua Tan, professor of electronic business at the
University, said: “The Beer Living Lab is setting a roadmap for
next-generation e-Customs solutions. We will test innovative
solutions based on IBM’s Tamper Resistant Embedded Controller and
an SOA developed by IBM that could revolutionise customs. Companies
using these solutions could benefit greatly due to less physical
inspections.”