Mobile Computing as a Data Source for the Material Flow Management (MFM)

Abstract

This paper describes the practical possibilities of mobile computing in the field of material flow management and as a solution for structured data gathering. The aim is a significant reduction of barriers for small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in order to facilitate the introduction and implementation of an integrated material flow management. Furthermore the overall quality of data gathering, and thus the quality of the data itself should profit from the approach. The state of the art is data gathering by using pencil and paper, which should be replaced by using mobile applications. There are defined data gathering methods in the field of environmental protection and business optimization such as Value Stream Mapping (VSM), Material Stream Mapping (MSM), Environmental Value Stream Mapping (EVSM) and the standardized checklist procedure proclaimed by the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA). All of them were investigated for their ability to automatize given processes. A concept of a promising and future orientated data gathering method was elaborated, which enabled the users to reuse the collected data for different visual analysis in a single software product. The implementation was made in the research project MOEBIUS, sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Within this project other mobile applications were also implemented, with the distinct focus on EMIS specific aspects as “waste”, “energy and water” and “legal compliance”, which are not discussed in this paper. For all of the invented mobile applications there was the requirement for small, simple and modular design, especially when considering the focused user group of SME. The advantage for SME is that they are able to compose different components to one software solution and in that way fit their characteristic requirements based on their company profile or specified use cases.