A federated interoperability approach for data driven logistic support in SMEs

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in logistics experience practical barriers when trying to use, exchange, share, and exploit real-time data in their operational processes. Such barriers include the abundance of proprietary data formats and schemes, the cost of implementing standards, the lack of trust among partners, the lack of IT expertise, and the uncertainty about benefits and return on investments. This position paper introduces the goal and proposed approach of a recently started research project that aims at lowering these barriers. The core proposition revolves around the application of a federated approach based on the concepts of the International Data Space (IDS). In this paper we present a high level architecture underlying this goal and approach. Two main components of the architecture are discussed in more detail: (1) a connector store, offering connectors to realize data exchange between heterogeneous ICT environments, and (2) an interoperability simulator, to explore collaboration opportunities prior to implementation.