Supply chain management in the era of the internet of things

Applications of IoT are taking place in sectors such as transportation, energy, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, retail, manufacturing, product life cycle management, recycling, and food traceability. It is predicted that the number of connected devices will reach up to 50 billion by 2020. The adoption of the IoT has the potential to improve operational processes, reduce costs and risks due to IoT?s transparency, traceability, adaptability, scalability, and flexibility. In line with the business model, a generic information infrastructure is devised that not only enables real-time interactions among different hierarchies, but also twins the physical operation flows and information flows effectively. Based on these designs, a rich set of decision-making tools is worked out to support various end-users in fulfilling their daily tasks. These tools use service-oriented models which are easy-to-deploy, flexible-to-access and simple-to-use through reconfigurable mechanisms and XML-based data exchange principles.