Implementing Business Processes using Internet of Things and Cloud Infrastructure | Jens Paulsen
| | Abstract | This thesis explores the characteristics of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and principles in a proof of concept (poc) setup. This is explored due to the fact that the maturity and interest in developing systems using these principles is increasing rapidly at the moment. The poc setup will consist of an internet connected scale and a barcode scanner sending measurements to a cloud platform. We find that augmenting these devices with intermediary micro-controllers allows us to flexibly extend the limited network capabilities of the devices to allow cooperation with a cloud platform (Platformas-a-Service) using the technologies and standards required.
The proof of concept explores the characteristics of IoT development, architecture, security and performance from a practical point of view using Amazon Web Services (AWS) technologies. We implement the poc system using these technologies, and find that in most ways the AWS platform provides us the aforementioned characteristics to a degree which lets developers build, verify and scale a PaaS system easily.
In the design and implementation we take into account resiliency against loss of internet connection and power in the different components of the system to minimize the need for technical assistance by the end-user or store personnel. Here we find that the most common scenarios are very well covered using capabilities already provided by operating systems, protocols and frameworks, but that more advanced failure modes require advanced logic to let the system diagnose the issue. Also, we find that if we cannot mitigate issues, the next best thing is to aid end-users and support personnel with good status and diagnostics capabilities.
Further we explore how the moving of a business process - in this scenario we will model a manual process using no digital hardware - from the analogue to the digital domain influences this work process and how it is performed after being digitized. We find several ways to improve the process by implementing fraud prevention using the scale as a verification device. Furthermore, we identify ways to enhance the shopping experience using smart phones during the shopping and a scale for checkout verification. We chose not to implement this in the poc setup, as it diverges too far from the hardware provided for the project and as it does not add sufficiently to the IoT-characteristic exploration that is already established in the present scenario. | | Type | Master's thesis [Academic thesis] | | Year | 2017 | | Publisher | Technical University of Denmark, Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science | | Address | Richard Petersens Plads, Building 324, DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark, compute@compute.dtu.dk | | Series | DTU Compute M.Sc.-2017 | | Note | | | Electronic version(s) | [pdf] | | Publication link | http://www.compute.dtu.dk | | BibTeX data | [bibtex] | | IMM Group(s) | Computer Science & Engineering |
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