Intelligent Systems Laboratory
Lab Projects

The Intelligent Systems Lab (ISL) at Center for Logistics and Digital Strategy provides an experimental environment for research and education in intelligent technologies for extended enterprise applications.

Lab Projects Include:

• CLE - Collaborative Learning for Secure Logistics
• VTP - Virtual Teaming Project
• PILOT - Prognostic-Integrated Logistics
• RFID - Radio Frequency Identification
• GIS - Geographic Information Systems
• BISS - Business Intelligence Support Systems

CLE - Collaborative Learning for Secure Logistics

CLDS, through the North Carolina Logistics Education Consortium (NCCLE), is developing a new, shared educational platform and associated technologies that leverage advanced communications and intelligent software in support of the emerging needs of business and the government for secure logistics process. The CLE is designed to be more aligned with the current web-centric practices of industry. Specifically, the CLDS team will develop a web-centric and collaborative set of modular tools that can be used in logistics programs not only at Lenoir Community College (LCC) in Kinston, North Carolina, but elsewhere across the state and nation. These tools and curricula will train students through simulation and “hands-on” experiments with logistics technologies that play a role in safeguarding the security of our nation. By leveraging synergies among the major state universities, community colleges and technical colleges, as well as its public schools, these new tools will be available to students locally, nationally, and even internationally. Other community colleges and educational organizations will be able to develop customized curricula and programs for their own students around these tools.

The primary pedagogic vehicle for these programs and materials is an innovative and globally accessible educational platform, the Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE). This digital space serves as a virtual “home” for the interactive and instructional tools that will be developed under this project, and as a laboratory for real-time collaborative learning. Some of the technologies and practices around which the CLE customizable tools will be built include:

• Wireless “smart” tags and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies for tracking shipments and parcels;
• Automatic identification technologies and bar code readers for warehouse operations;
• Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for tracking and tracing;
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for real-time re-routing of shipments; and
• Intelligent agent software for 24/7 monitoring of the logistics chain

VTP - Virtual Teaming Project

What is the Virtual Teaming Project?
The Virtual Teaming Project (VTP) is an educational initiative to help students learn how global supply chains are created and managed in the new digital economy. Students from participating universities engage in role-playing exercises with their peers around the world in online competitive simulations.

Who can play?
Your college or university can participate in an upcoming VTP exercise by contacting Dr. Noel P. Greis, Director, Center for Logistics and Digital Strategy at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise located in the Kenan-Flagler Busines School at the University of North Carolina. Exercises are being scheduled regularly several times each year. Custom games can also be developed with select groups of partners.

Who is Coordinating the VTP?
The VTP is being coordinated by the Center for Logistics and Digital Strategy (CLDS) at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, in partnership with Lenoir Community College and other members of the North Carolina Consortium for Logistics Education (NCCLE).

How is the Project Funded?
The VTP was developed under a grant from the National Science Foundation to the North Carolina Consortium for Logistics Education (NCCLE). Additional funds were provided by the Center for International Business Education Research at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

How Can I Become a Development Partner?
CLDS is affiliating with the Global Logistics Research Initiative (GLORI) and its members to develop the VTP. GLORI is a research consortium of 12 universities in North America, Europe and Asia. If you are interested in becoming a development partner, contact Noel Greis [link: noel_greis@unc.edu] at UNC’sCenter for Logistics and Digital Strategy.

PILOT - Prognostics Integrated Logistics

PILOT (Prognostics Integrated Logistics) is a consortium of global universities, aerospace manufacturing companies, and airlines that have aligned to engage in collaborative research and development activities to achieve significant improvements in the provisioning of intelligent aviation services.

Specifically, PILOT hopes to achieve improvements in aviation asset management through the conduct of research and development activities that promote intelligent technologies, including prognostics and intelligent software, in activities such as aircraft health monitoring, maintenance planning, parts logistics and supply chain management. Research activities include:

• Assess and evaluate state-of-the-art prognostics and related sensor, intelligent agent, and information technologies from the perspective of aircraft health management;
• Develop new logistics and supply chain concepts and models that are motivated by new intelligent prognostics and RFID;
• Identify new capabilities and service offerings that have the potential that create business opportunities for industry members of PILOT.
• Model, simulate and assess performance improvements and competitive benefits of new prognostics-integrated practices, policies and strategies across the value chain; and
• Develop intelligent prototypes and applications in UNC’s Intelligent Systems Laboratory that can be scaled for future implementation in an operational environment.

For more information on the PILOT program contact Noel Greis. [link: noel_greis@unc.edu]

RFID - Radio Frequency Identification

“RFID technology is finally coming into its own, as engineers work out the bugs and vendors learn to make them more cheaply,” says Noel Greis, director of the Kenan Institute’s Center for Logistics and Digital Strategy. “Meanwhile, the private sector is driving RFID usage through their supply chain initiatives.

“Our goal is to help companies learn not only how to respond to these challenges and opportunities, but also to use new technologies to launch entirely new lines of businesses that create value from their supply chains,” Greis says.

RFID and intelligent software are natural partners for building smart supply chains. Greis and her global partners from academia and industry are engaged in several projects leveraging RFID technology.

GIS - Geographic Information Systems

The GIS Technologies in Logistics project is a series web-based educational modules for persons interested in applicaions of GIS (graphical information systems) in the field of logistics. The modules are divided into four series:

Module 1: Logistics Technologies Global
Detials how globalization and technology have helped to create "new logistics" and explores how mapping and simple supply chains have evolved into complex, global webs through new technologies in communication and transportation.

Module 2: Why GIS? National
Explains how geographic information and technology can help with decision-making processes through demostrations of GIS capabilities.

Module 3: Data North Carolina
Demostrates the importance of geographic data and how geographic data and information play roles in business decision-making.

Module 4: GIS at Work, Local to Global
Allows participants to see the applications of modules 1, 2, and 3 in the porblem-solving and decision-making process and see how a companies can use visual and time analysis to make intelligent choices in the areas of tracking and tracing, customer service and market growth.

BISS - Business Intelligence Support Systems

Business Intelligence is a Service which starts and ends with a customer...the decision maker. Thus it suggests itself to compare a BI system with a supply chain: there is a customer, having a problem (lack of information) which requires developing and producing a solution (a standard report, dedicated analysis, etc.) and to delivering it to the customer.

But looking at state of the art industrial management processes we learn that:

If quality response and commitment meet expectations (i.e. if it is valuable), then industrial customers prefer suppliers to join processes of development and production (outsourcing) while focusing themselves on core competencies.

This behavior is known as "supplier integration" (reversely: customer integration). Obviously this relationship focuses on feedback and reward systems which in the end evaluate contribution of suppliers to the operational and strategic goals of customers.

The CLDS regularly engages industry, academia and government in dialogue, seminars and applied projects in emerging business intelligence methodologies.