#Managed EDI services for IBM i

[existentialdreadinc]

Special Delivery

When David arrived at the obsidian tower, the parking lot and lobby were as deserted as they’d been the day before.

Stepping out onto floor thirty-seven, he didn’t bother to announce himself this time and instead went straight to his office.  His desk, which had been empty yesterday apart from the packet, now sported a gunmetal gray electric typewriter that appeared to be the same vintage as the one he’d used in his high school typing class.  There was a blank sheet of paper rolled into the platen and David could hear the IBM Selectric humming softly.  Lying beside the machine were two other pages.  The first appeared to be a letter to someone named Mr. Devereux and the second was addressed to David.

Greetings Mister Schiff,

Let me say again how delighted we are to have you with us.

On your desk you’ll find a missive to one of EDIs primary investors, Alfred Devereux. He’s a local resident of Marterborough and a rather fastidious and eccentric individual.  Mister Devereux is adverse to modern forms of communication and to what he refers to as ‘stale correspondence’.  He has the uncanny ability to suss out such things, something about the smell, and requires that all his letters be given to him within an hour of their creation.  This rules out the usual methods of transport via postal or parcel services.

Please duplicate the letter on the machine provided and deliver it to Mister Devereux at the address listed below.  

Also, try your best to avoid scrutinizing the letter as you’re replicating it, or at the very least, refrain from retaining the information as it tends to anger him.

After you’ve completed this important task, the rest of the day is yours to do with as you wish.  Simply make sure to report back to the office at eight the following morning.

I have the utmost confidence in your abilities and very much look forward to meeting you in the future.

Sincerely,

Edwin McPherson – EDI Level Manager (34-39)  

David read over the instructions again and fought back the urge to flee the building.

He slipped on his reading glasses, pushed the roller bar into place, and began typing.

                                                                                                                      *****

Driving over to Devereux’s place, David worried that he’d remembered too much of the letter and tried to fill his head with mundane things like song lyrics and dialogue he’d memorized from movies.

He honestly didn’t know what was so sensitive about the information as it wasn’t much more than accounting balances and the minutes of some recent meetings.

“Damn it, stop that!” he scolded himself and started humming the chorus from “500 Miles” by The Proclaimers.

He parked his car on the street in front of a gray, wooden-shingled house with white shutters that was bordered by a black picket fence.  

The small gate in front of the concrete walkway leading up to the door screeched on its hinges like an injured bird when he opened it.

“Guess I don’t need to knock.”  David muttered and was only halfway up the path when the door to the house swung inward revealing a tall man with gaunt, ashen features and thinning silver hair.

“Good Morning, Mister Devereux.”  David said.

“Nearly afternoon by my count.”

David glanced at his watch to confirm that this was not actually the case and then grimaced in acknowledgment.  “My apologies for not arriving sooner.”

“No matter, not like I’ve got any pressing plans.  Come in.”

David nodded and quickly made his way across the threshold, nearly being clipped by the door as Devereux closed it behind him.

“So you’re the new one they sent.”

“I’m from EDI, yes.”

“Last fella was a good deal younger.  Suspect he’s moved on to bigger things.”

“I’m not really sure about my predecessor.”

“Course not, why would they tell you.”

David pretended not to hear this last bit as he fumbled around in his coat pocket for the letter.

“Here you are sir.” David said, handing Devereux the envelope.

The old man pushed the paper rectangle firmly up against his nostrils and inhaled deeply.  “1977 IBM Selectric with a Courier print ball.”

“Yes sir, I believe that’s correct.”  

“More of a Smith-Corona man myself, but the Selectric is a good machine.”

David nodded.

“Assume you haven’t been with the company for very long.”

“…oh, um, no.” David stammered.  “It’s actually my first week.”

Devereux made his way from the foyer over to a desk in the adjacent living room.  “Have a seat.”  he said, absently motioning toward a leather sofa at the opposite end of the room.

David shuffled over and sat with his hands in his lap, diverting his attention to the mantel above the fireplace and pretending to be engrossed in the various knickknacks while Devereux read.

The entire message was only a page long, but the old man seemed to be pondering each word as he ran the tip of his finger along the paper.  After several minutes he stood up, folded the paper back into thirds, and crossed the room.

“Did you read this?” Devereux said, brandishing the letter at David.

“No sir.”

Devereux arched an eyebrow.

“I mean...I obviously had to when I was typing it, but I made sure to forget everything on my way over.”

The old man examined David for several moments, but then nodded.  He grabbed a box of matches off the mantel and struck one, touching the flame to the end of the paper and then tossing both into the fireplace.

“You don’t know what they do over there, do you?”

David considered trying to come up with some business related jargon that sounded feasible, but just shrugged.  “No sir, not really.”

“When they first came here to scout out the town, one of the company founders asked for my assistance.  It wasn’t my money they were interested in, but rather my influence in helping sell the idea to the other residents.  Fact of the matter is, this town wouldn’t be here now if they hadn’t showed up, but I guess they didn’t want to be viewed as interlopers or invaders.  So I did my little song and dance, told everyone what they wanted to hear, and we all cheered like simpleminded children when that grotesque totem was erected in the center of our home.”

David started to say something, but realized he had no reply.

“You’re here because they want you here; same as the rest of us.  Knowing more than that is liable to get you into trouble.”

“…what sort of trouble?”

“The only sort there is.”

“I don’t—”

“My suggestion is for you to keep your mind focused on your work.”

“...okay....”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t show you out.  There’s an urgent tobacco related matter I need to attend to.”

David nodded and made his way through the front door.

When he went to close the gate at the end of the path, he saw that all the lights in the house had gone dark.  

[myallywynn]

Using blockchain to mitigate risk in container operations – a researcher’s perspective

The outlook

The theory is that an adopter of technology will not be eager to join in because the technology looks fancy.

A difficulty that Blockchain is struggling to address is that its true potential might only be realized when everyone is on board, but the benefits it brings back might not be visible to all or is not tangible.

The managing board expects the providers to show them how their solution would help them make money while ensuring an acceptable level of risk, not how much they have to pay to join in another platform that they have to add to their collection of systems to be maintained.

The role of CIOs and CTOs is therefore critical to make his/her company become an educated buyer in this emerging market.

A recent study by Son Nguyen, Peggy Shu-Ling Chen, and Bill Yuquan Du at Australian Maritime College, University of Tasmania, Australia revealed the potential of the increasing complexity of system management and the emerging of multiple-event risk scenarios originated from the information flow of the industry.

Blockchain solutions are being realized in container shipping

Blockchain is an interesting case of technology application in the maritime industry. Though the media and the salespeople brought the technology awareness to the industry together with a massive wave of start-ups, the capability and maturity are not up to the pitch in many cases.

The inflation of the marketing departments might have gone too far. Here and there, blockchain is sarcastically called by practitioners as “a solution in search of a problem”.

This assessment does not deny the fact that blockchain, at least in theory, is revolutionary in many aspects, posing a significant disruption that even potentially barring it from being adopted.

In container shipping, considerable efforts have been put on blockchain integrated solutions. Initiated by Maersk and IBM, TradeLens is gaining critical mass with more and more parties connected to its blockchain network built on Hyperledger Fabric and IBM’s cloud infrastructure.

CargoX’s Smart B/L has recently been approved by the International Group of P&I Clubs. Other names also emerged, such as T-Mining (PIN code use case for Antwerp Port Authority), GSBN, AntChain (blockchain deal with COSCO), 300cubits.

In a more inclusive vision, blockchain is finding various use cases in supply chain management.

Would container shipping operational risk still be a problem?

The participation of technology powerhouses like Ant Group and IBM and industry giants like Maersk, MSC, CMA-CGM, COSCO in the blockchain-integrated solution market certainly provided a sense of credibility to the technology.

With the blockchain’s progressive adoption, its capability in improving the visibility, integrity, transparency, and resilience of the information flow has been demonstrated at the operational level.

Nevertheless, would applying blockchain mean the container shipping industry be free from current eye-soring information operational risks?

Aligning with the Gartner hype cycle, limitations and potential hiccups are realized and addressed together with deeper integration and more featureful implementations.

By combining the results of blockchain technological risk studies, the reports from specialized institutes, technology solution providers, and adopters, 28 risks were identified in blockchain-integrated container shipping systems.

Furthermore, 47 causal connections were discovered among risks, creating an interconnected network of risks.

Not only serving as a manifest for industrial stakeholders in reviewing solution proposals, the network also unveiled interesting findings regarding the current issues that many parties in the chain should look into for sustainable digitalization.

Security and integrity of data in the blockchain might be secured…as long as it is covered by the blockchain network.

A notion that advocates and salesmen used is that blockchain will bring better data quality with higher security.

Well, sort of. Blockchain can ensure the immutability in the sense that the information is received, endorsed, and chained in the distributed ledger.

The fact that each party owns and protects a copy of the ledger significantly increases the effort needed to falsify data. However, the industry should be aware that that protection is limited by the reachability of the blockchain.

The gateways of information, if left vulnerable, are still deadly weaknesses. All agreed that carrier A reported usual temperature in the container, but are the sensors submitting it reliable?

Could the cargo declaration ensure to be correct? Of course, the trail of information is there, meaning the parties are more attached to their responsibility, but information integrity will still be a pain if blockchain’s members and blockchain service providers take their IT security lightly.

  Smart contract still has a long way to go

Smart contracts are automatically executed with certain inputs, meaning that the agreed business model is enforced by codes and/or inputs recorded by the blockchain network.

The application of smart contracts in the financial aspect of the industry sounds unattractive, especially when the data quality still cannot be ensured, let alone other scenarios such as errors (programming bugs), or misunderstanding of smart contract’s behaviors.

Losing absolute control of their business activities is unacceptable from the adopters’ perspective. In the case of Hyperledger Fabric (powering TradeLens), the smart contract is used differently, to automate the update of the ledgers at all blockchain members, so-called “chaincode”.

The application of smart contracts is extremely uncertain, not only because of how it is implemented in particular solutions, but also the current underdeveloped legal framework and recognizability of authoritative bodies. If both parties agreed on a piece of code, could a court’s decision reverse the outcome?

  The capacity of the blockchain network is not an issue…..…yet

The current technical level of blockchain development can maintain the continuity of operations in the container shipping industry. But it is worth noting that the true potential of blockchain requires a populated network with an adequate level of digitalization to be realized.

With the current situation of unstandardized operations in the information flow and the dependence of parties on legacy systems, bottlenecks are observable throughout the supply chain. Additionally, the resilience of container shipping against delays ensures that the throughput capacity of blockchain solutions might not be a pressing issue in the near future.

However, if blockchain-integrated solutions truly become a thing, technical evolvements to allow a larger amount of transactions to be processed per second might be required.

Risks such as lowered performance due to instabilities of infrastructure (e.g., cloud platform), smart contract errors, or cyberattacks might cause significant delays in the network.

The current proposals of blockchain platforms state that they can theoretically scale up to 10~20,000 tps, but the number in operation can be much lower than that, with much more complex situations. With solutions depend on public blockchains (e.g., Ethereum), the number is even lower.

  System design with standardization is a key factor

The design of blockchains is critical toward the resilience of the network as well as the level of risk a particular blockchain-integrated system faces.

How many members are there in the network? Is there any point of centralization? And how vulnerable is it? How will the ledger be distributed and updated?

These elements will decisively affect the performance of the system. The interoperability of blockchain solutions is another issue, which is pushing the players in the industry to move from EDI to API, which is easier to use, share, and faster in its combination with cloud computing.

Many organizations and associations are trying to build a solid framework for a digitalized future of container shipping (e.g., DCSA, GS1, ISO).

  About the author

Son Nguyen holds a Master of research degree in Transport Planning and Management and is a Ph.D. student in Australian Maritime College (AMC), University of Tasmania (UTAS).

He is currently researching the digitalization progress of the transport industry and its potential in changing the risks that members in the supply chain have to deal with. 

The above article is part of his fulfillment of a Doctor of Philosophy degree funded by the Tasmania Graduate Research Scholarship, iMOVE CRC and supported by the Cooperative Research Centres program, an Australian Government initiative.

The paper has been published on International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management (IJPDLM), Emerald Publishing. Permanent link https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPDLM-01-2020-0036.

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[aliciabuncle]

Turn turbulent airport operations into high flying results with IoT solutions

How many times have you been at the airport and had to lug your bag up a flight of stairs because the escalator was broken? Or walked around a moving walkway that was standing still? How often have you wondered why your flight was delayed, or why it was taking so long to get your bags? These are everyday inconveniences that can now be avoided. How? With asset condition monitoring and predictive maintenance for airport operations made possible with IBM® Watson® IoT, and IBM Business Partner, Arrow Electronics.

The challenge of increasing flight volume

Air travel is predicted to double by 2035 to 7.2 billion passengers per year, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). That means that airport facilities are under tremendous pressure to keep pace with projected growth. This phenomenal rate of expansion contributes to:

Declining passenger experience: Crowded airports create difficult and slow airport journeys.

Increasing operational costs: More operational staff is needed to keep airports functioning 24×7.

Non-optimal use of high-cost assets: Increasing unplanned equipment failures due to aging assets means more emergency repairs and non-optimized asset replacement.

Delays and minor inconveniences add up

One major cause of airport flight delays is the availability of potable water. Planes can’t leave without drinking water, according to airline regulations. Despite the importance of this water, doors to the cabinets that house it at every gate are often left open. In cold winter locations, lines may freeze, water in the planes are not replenished and flights can’t leave on time.

In addition, minor inconveniences add up to safety hazards and poor customer experience when escalators, moving walkways and baggage handling systems are not consistently operational. These problems may cause customers to spend less money at the airport, or they may even feel they had such a poor experience that they would consider using a different airport for their next trip. Because airports are measured on their safety and customer experience records and this information is public, there is a strong incentive to improve the door-to-door experience of passengers and other patrons.

The solution is Smart

To tackle these challenges of customer satisfaction and operational performance, IBM and Arrow Electronics have worked together to develop Arrow’s Smart Airport Asset Management Solution. It’s a solution that addresses the complex challenges faced by a typical airport.

The Arrow end-to-end solution offers hardware, software and cloud services encompassing industry tested IoT sensor kit, gateways and cloud-hosted Maximo® EAM (enterprise asset management) and IBM Watson IoT Platforms. IBM Watson IoT platform helps derive data and insight from IoT devices and IBM Maximo® enterprise asset management(EAM) software helps monitor the health of physical airport assets in real time, streamlining airport operations. This solution helps provide efficient operation and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) of airport assets.

Running a pilot at a large North American airport

The foundation for the solution is a pilot currently running at a large North American airport. Currently, Arrow collects data from escalators, moving walkways, baggage handling systems and potable water cabinets. Tools and software connect systems that focus on:

Baggage handling: Predict failures by monitoring vibration, noise and temperature through sensors near motors, actuators and other critical components

Moving walkways and escalators: Predict equipment failures by monitoring vibration, noise, hydraulic fluid leaks and temperature via sensors installed near motors, actuators, gearboxes and other critical components

Potable water cabinets: Temperature, flow, leak detection and other sensors are in the potable water cabinet. Anomalous sensor readings trigger automated alerts, for example, freezing water, open doors.

EDI, an IBM Premier Business Partner, is Arrow’s Maximo deployment partner for the pilot.  EDI worked with the airport to develop the use cases, as well as the actions that come from analyzing the IoT data. The solution included individual dashboards for real time asset health monitoring across the four asset families. The airport in the pilot program is using the solution to demonstrate how an IoT strategy can optimize the reliability of key infrastructure systems.

How airport operations can benefit from the Arrow Smart Airport Asset Management Solution

The Arrow Smart Airport Asset Management Solution delivers extensive benefits to airport operators, customers, airlines and other airport patrons. This include improvements in airport performance, customer experience, operational productivity, and asset lifecycle.

     Improve airport performance

Increase aircraft on time departures by eliminating ground service delays due to potable water issues.

Optimize airport revenues by ensuring gate availability and reducing unnecessary gate reassignments and closures.

Expedite baggage delivery and reduce baggage damage during baggage transfers and passenger delivery.

Improve airport infrastructure while maintaining a safe and efficient environment for passengers, workers and airline staff.

Enhance the passenger experience to create a positive and profitable retail atmosphere.

Improve customer experience

Ensure passenger comfort and convenience by reducing difficult trips through the airport due to inoperable moving walkways and escalators.

Improve baggage delivery time to passengers and reduce baggage mis-connections while maintaining required up time on baggage transport systems.

Optimize operational productivity

Enable rapid response times to problems by providing detailed asset location and configuration information, maximizing effectiveness of maintenance crews.

Decrease wrench time and increase right first-time fixes by providing crews with details of asset problems.

Enable centralized monitoring and management, eliminating visits to remote and hard to reach assets for performance checks.

Optimize asset use, costs and lifecycle

Predict problems before they become catastrophic minimizing damage and extending asset lifecycles.

Increase asset uptime through proactive, need-based repairs; avoid failures during busy airport times.

Lower costs through reducing spares inventory for assets under condition-based monitoring schemes.

Decrease expenditures on passenger carts and other alternate transportation used in lieu of inoperable moving walkways and escalators.

Inspiration takes flight at IBM IoT Exchange

Stay tuned for a Quick Bytes live episode airing later today where I go into more detail about the partnership and solution.

Read the press release here.

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