Cloud ubiquitous object management system for heterogeneous resource management in e-commerce logistics

Abstract

The prosperity of E-commerce has propelled E-commerce logistics into a golden age. As a typical resource-oriented industry, the logistics resources scale has expanded enormously accordingly. Now the increasing competitions prompt these E-commerce logistics companies to change from extensive growth to intensive growth. Hence, the flexible disposition of logistics resources has become a core competence for E-commerce logistics companies. Resource management has already permeated the modern business management through the half-century of development. Resources are treated as a cornerstone for enterprises to carry out their production and operating activities. To improve the effectiveness and efficiency in resource management, remarkable contributions have been made by research and the industry. Innovative technologies are also introduced as supports. However, with the constant development of industrialization, it seems that the logistics industry is still struggling to bath in the spring of intelligent resource management due to the heterogeneity problem. Through analyzing this heterogeneity problem, three levels of heterogeneities are identified and expected to be solved in this research. An integrated system is proposed to realize heterogeneous logistics resource management using the object-oriented methodology. Object-oriented analysis is firstly conducted to identify the major objects involved in this problem. The system requirements are summarized around these major system components and object-oriented design is introduced to establish the system framework to satisfy corresponding requirements. Finally, motivated by a real-life case, system implementation is completed to verify the proposed system. Several major contributions have been made in this research. Firstly, a specific taxonomy is summarized to clearly describe the SROs. A management framework is proposed to conceptually describe the diverse management scenarios of logistics resources in E-commerce logistics operations. Meanwhile, a technical architecture is proposed to realize the management framework. Secondly, a cloud-based mobile middleware system was proposed to facilitate the construction of SROs using industrial wearables. Layered architecture and microservice architecture were combined to achieve much higher level of flexibility and compatibility. A lightweight mobile agent framework is designed to address the heterogeneity issue under wearable environment. Additionally, an HUPnP mechanism was also built to guarantee adaptability and reliability of the mobile middleware. Thirdly, the concept of CUOSP has been presented to simplify and facilitate the integration and deployment of heterogeneous resource systems through the cloud ubiquitous object, thereby reducing the cost for integration and development. The concept of KBA is proposed and defined as the technical framework for the cloud ubiquitous object with a finite-state machine. Besides, the computing framework of CGSs is designed as an enabling technology to fulfill the all-around computing requirements of KBA. Fourthly, the concept of Bc-WfOS has been presented to manage the heterogeneous logistics resources sharing. The multi-dimensional workflow model is proposed to abstract operation factors involved in E-commerce logistics and organize resources to satisfy different operation logics. Additionally, blockchain is introduced with agent-based workflow management method to guarantee data reliability and truthfulness among stakeholders.