ENG233
End of Course Assessment – Date
Internet of Things (IoT)
ECA Submission Deadline:
Names:
PI Number:
Question 1
Problem Definition:
a. Propose and explain FOUR (4) other business and operational problems the tractor
manufacturer might be facing due to the above-mentioned inefficiencies in the internal
logistics process. Provide table and description.

Type	Problem	Description
Business	Tractors delivered to the customers	Delivery of a wrong tractor to the customer
Business	The extra cost attributed to picking up rescheduling	Pick-up missing timing with the need for extra costs like rescheduling and workforce.
Operational	Loss of capacity and time of locating the tractors	Lost time of locating the specific tractors considering that the drivers need to locate manually the tractor. Besides, manpower is required to locate the exact tractor that shall meet the time scheduled for the pickup
Operational	Poor accounting of tractors available in stock	No stock on hand accountability

Operational – Poor accounting of tractors in stock
The manufacturer might not have the capacity of accounting for the tractors available in the
stockyard. There might be errors in the paper records others lost others not updated in a timely
way. Besides, stolen tractors might not be able to supply at the right time and time will be lost in
finding another tractor to deliver.
Operational – Time lost and the capacity of locating the tractors
Once there is little information where the tractor was packed last, there will be a need to conduct
a manual search inside the yard. The team in charge of logistics will have a longer lead-time for
the tractor to pick up to the pick-up point to the yard. The capacity and time will be lost since
there is a reduced labor hour of the tractors manual search thus cost reduction. For instance, the
driver cannot establish where the tractor is and the pick-up time is near, an extra workforce needs
to be allocated and still not found with a missed pick-up timing.
Business – Extra costs because of pick-up rescheduling
Once the timing of rescheduling missed but required this shall lead to extra money labor and
time. For instance, if the tractor is picked up and leading to the pick-point but misses the timing
of pick-up then the tractor will be brought back to the yard.
Business – Wrong tractors to customer’s delivery
Drivers might pick up the wrong type of tractor and its delivery to the customer. This, in turn,
leads to picking up rescheduling with an incurred extra cost of returning the tractor.
b. Prioritize and quantify those four problems in order of their impact on the business (from
high to low). Provide table and description.

Priority	Type	Problem	Description
1	Business	Tractors delivered to the customers	Delivery of a wrong tractor to the customer
2	Business	The extra cost attributed to picking up rescheduling	Pick-up missing timing with the need for extra costs like rescheduling and manpower.
3	Operational	Loss of capacity and time of locating the tractors	Lost time of locating the specific tractors considering that the drivers need to locate manually the tractor. Besides, manpower is required to locate the exact tractor that shall meet the time scheduled for the pickup
4	Operational	Poor accounting of tractors available in stock	No stock on hand accountability

Priority 1: Delivering wrong tractors to customers
This remains the highest impact on the operations and the business. Once there is a scheduled
pick up, the driver shall locate the tractor leading to productivity and time loss. If the driver picks
the wrong tractor a rescheduling of the pickup shall be done with a required return. The
rescheduling requires an extra cost to the company with a repeat of the entire cycle.
Priority 2: Extra rescheduling pick up the cost
This remains the highest impact on the operations and the business. Once there is a scheduled
pick up, the driver shall locate the tractor leading to productivity and time loss. If the driver picks
the wrong tractor a rescheduling of the pickup shall be done with a required return. The
rescheduling requires an extra cost to the company with a repeat of the entire cycle. If the
rescheduling time cannot be located and miss then there will be pick up needed (Weinberger,
Bilgeri, and Fleisch, 2016). This process needs more cost for the whole cycle and the company
and a search for the tractor are repeated. There will be a productivity loss attributes to increased
operation cost, time and capacity.
Priority 3: Loss of capacity and time due to locating the tractors
This is the third priority considering that there exists an operational impact since more logistics
will be needs in the location of a specific tractor shipment schedule. Now, the tractors belong to
different categories and all are packed at different places in the yard. The tractors now belong to
different categories parked at different places within the yard. More lead-time and manpower and
money are invested in search of the tractors for them, not to the shipment. Any space allocated
for each category can be parked at time and labor aimed at reducing the time taken to search for
a tractor.
Priority 4: Poor tractor in stock accounting
This is the last priority since it affects the business if a person does not know the number of
available inventory tractors at hand. Once the tractors were stolen, there will be a loss of money
and assets needed in building an extra tractor.
Question 2
Workflow Design:
(a) Plan the operational workflow for the above problem. Provide a block diagram and
description.

Manufacturing date display of the tractors in the application yard

 

Location display of the tractor in the application

Tractors location present in
the cat yard
End

Inform customers

 

Send a notification to the driver of collecting the tractor from the park and yard at the loading bay

Notification sent to a team
of internal logistic where
tractors are
No
Maintaining the tractors by
Technicians
Yes Do tractors
require servicing
or PM?
Yes Yard stock No
Checking
The supervisor receives
order from customers
reorder
Start
Once a tractor is demanded the supervisor assigns the category for the driver to locate then park
the pick-up tractor in the loading bay and is ready to be shipped. The process is labor-intensive
but more efficient including the IoT solution required to be put in place. First, each vehicle needs
a unique ID tag to clear the accountability that contains the necessary information like the types
of the tractor, tractor location, date it was last maintained, the date it was manufactured and the
model number.
After receiving the customer’s order, the supervisor then required to log in to the web-based
application to confirm the availability minus the hand reservation for the tractor’s category and
not send the driver to go hunt yard for the tractors, which rely on the outdated files. This is
important since it lists the visibility of the available tractor (Chachin, 2017). Once the tractor
does not carry the requested customer immediately indicating that a similar model built tractor as
per the request.
After the supervisor has extracted the required information concerning the availability of the
server, an application shall open point the exact location where the tractor is in the yard. The
supervisor requires choosing a tractor that has a reserve under the ordered number and shall not
lead to a reservation duplication. Because of the large scale in the yard breaks down into
different zones within the yard where the drivers then locate the tractor. This is an application
displaying the date of manufacturer establishing if the tractor needs preventive servicing or
maintenance before shipped to the customer. This situation assists in determining if the date of
delivery takes the most time for the tractor to get ready.
The information thus sent directly for the technician to go forward with the said task. The
technician thus scans if the tractor records and confirms the completion and start time of
maintenance servicing and prevention. After the completion, a notification sent to the team of
internal logistics notifying the tractors are ready to be shipped (Ju, Kim, and Ahn, 2016). The
team in charge of logistics thus schedules a pick-up tractor after confirming the system
notification to the supervisor and driver. The tractor driver then drives the tractor towards the
loading bay for the pick-up schedule. If there is a failure to detect the ID of the tractor inside the
yard, there will be a need for updating the server for any person to view the tractor status.
(b) Highlight and explain the conditions and dependencies of workflow activities.
Provide description.

Conditions	Dependencies
Order Fulfilment	Information in Real-time collected and used by the supervisor in ensuring delivery achieved.
Tractors in the yard location	Indicate the exact stock and location availability of tractors inside the yard
Tractors for order issuing	Indicate the tractors date of manufacturing then issue the first in first out manufacturing date basis
Servicing or PM to be accomplished	Indicate the date of last maintenance then indicate if servicing or PM is required
Technicians maintaining the tractors	Indication if the servicing or PM is required

 

Tractors ready to deploy

Indication if a tractor is available then notifies the logistics team if PM or servicing is appropriate

Conditions: Location of the tractors inside the yard
Dependencies: The system allows searching by the supervisor in searching the tractor’s
availability after keying the specific model category and number. The process allows the
supervisor to perform a preliminary stock-checking present in the yard.
Conditions: Tractors for order issuance
Dependencies: The system indicates the tractor dates of manufacture thus issuing the tractors
depending on the manufacturing date earliest to the latest allowing tractors maximization tractors
lifespan.
Conditions: Servicing or PM to be done
Dependencies: The system indicates the last maintenance date thus indicating if servicing or PM
is necessary. This assists in determining the required longer lead time in meeting the order.
Conditions: Maintaining the tractors by the technician
Dependencies: The system indicates if servicing or PM is required and the technician assigns
tractor maintenance.
Conditions: Tractors ready to ship
Dependencies: After completion of Servicing and PM by the technician, the system notifies the
completion to the logistic team. The team in charge of logistics arranges these tractors to be
shipped out.
Conditions: Fulfilling the order
Dependencies: After the system indicating tractors availability, it checks and assigns these
orders manufactured for the specific order. The system indicates how the tractor maintained by
Servicing and PM needed. If it is not needed, the logistic team allows the preparation of the ship
outside the tractor (Yang, Zuo, and Li, 2013). However, if it is needed, the technician assigns to
maintain the tractor and informs the team in charge of logistics after completed for the logistic
team to proceed shipping out the tractor.
Question 3
IoT Solution Design:
a) Design the overall FOUR (4) stages architectural diagram of the IoT solution for your
proposal. Provide a block diagram and description.
b. Recommend the possible technologies in each stage of the IoT solution. Provide table and
description.

(i) (ii) (iii)	Cloud Technologies Communication & Connectivity Protocols Analytics Applications and
(iv)	Sensors

 

Features	Type of Sensors	Type of Connectivity	Type of Computing	Type of Analytics and Application
Date of Manufacturin g	Presence Sensor	LoRaWAN	Edge Computing	(PaaS) Service Platform

 

Data Location	Presence Sensor	LoRaWaN	Edge Computing	(PaaS) Service Platform
Availability of Data	Position Sensor	GPS	Fog Computing	(PaaS) Service Platform

Type of Sensors
Checking the availability of the stock present in the yard thus installing the GPS module in every
tractor inside the yard. Once the tractor GPS does not agree with the GPS coordinate yard one
concludes that the tractor is not available inside the yard. It is concluded that the exact tractors
availability inside the yard. The coordinates of GPS use position sensors while providing the
coordinates of the Global Position System locating the tractors.
Then tag every tractor with a specific unique ID that records the inventory tractor status
providing the specific yard location. After scanning the ID tag, one then identifies the specific
tractor that can retrieve maintenance and manufacturing dates once the PM and Servicing dates
are required. The sensor presence applied at the pinpoint at the final tractor location inside the
yard with wireless RFID. After parking the tractor the driver scans then capturing location and
data once it is parked. The collected information used by the logistic team then receives the
updated data with the application.
Type of Connectivity
Every type of data as captured by the sensors collects the industrial equipment embedded system.
The analog data converts into digital form before transmission of the equipment using LoRaWan.
The one used in Singapore is AS932 containing a bandwidth of EU433 or 920-925 MHz with a
bandwidth of EU863-870 or 433.05-434.79 MHz with an 866-869 MHz bandwidth. Some of the
securities used are Application Session Key (AppSKey), Network Session Key (NwkSKey) and
Application Key (AppKey).
Type of Computing
The computing edge and fog computing used to provide real-time data analytics and data-stream
acceleration to provide feedback without any form of latency. The application of edge computing
is reducing the backhaul traffic including the central repository. Fog computing then monitors
and analyzes the received information.
Type of Application and Analytics
The cloud-based software is referred to as SaaS used in the computer that connects the devices.
This is the place where the third party hosts the application and making the data available to the
customers through the internet information connected easily and accessed easily.
c. List FOUR (4) key security challenges, and how you would address those in the
proposed IOT solution. Provide table and description.

Challenges	Description	Solution
Secure constrained devices	The devices of IoT have a limited capacity of storage, processing and memory capacity without the cap0acity of processing huge encryption.	Application of different networks processing data with firewall implementation.
Secure communication	Across network communication between cloud and devices might not be secured.	Allows encryption transportation in data communication
Manage device update	Device update is the most significant thing since it assists in minimizing security risk but uphold productivity	Installation device system pushing for regular updates and reminders and auto-updating
Authorizing authenticated devices	Securing IoT requires the authorization of authenticated devices	Allows factor authentication accessing tokens with a better password.

d. Verify the scalability of your solution by illustrating how the proposed solution can be
scaled for 30,000 tractors, at various warehouse locations across the country. Provide
table and description.

Features	Type of Connectivity	Type of Sensors	Type of Analytics and Application	Type of Connectivity	Type of Computing
Manufacturin g data	Wi-Fi	Presence Sensor	Platform as a Service (PaaS)	Wi-Fi	Cloud Computing
Location data	Wi-Fi	Presence Sensor	Platform as a Service (PaaS)	Wi-Fi	Cloud Computing
Availability of data	GPS	Position Sensor	Platform as a Service (PaaS)	GPS	Cloud Computing

Type of Sensors
To confirm the amount of stock present in the yard, one needs to install a GPS module for every
tractor present in the yard. This aspect determines the precise location of the GPS of the tractor.
Once the tractor GPS does not tally with the local address of the warehouse GPS coordinates
thus concluding that the tractor is not present in the warehouse. From this aspect, it is evident
that the exact availability of the tractors in every yard will be known. For the GPS coordinates,
one can use a position sensor that provides the coordinates of the Global Positioning System
indicating the location of the tractor.
Type of Computing
Cloud remains essential since it processes and collects data that is used since collected data from
various devices and cites are accessible across the globe. Through the integration of cloud
computing like the on-premise edge devices and fog, networks help in reducing network traffic
and improves operational efficiency. Therefore, the cloud will focus on business intelligence and
predictive analysis that involves processing a huge amount of data from the various sources
(Ziouvelou, and McGroarty, 2017). Considering the different data collected from various
warehouses it is prudent to place the best choice to compute the data.
Type of Analytics and Application
A type like SaaS is a software-based on cloud computing used by connected devices or
computers.
Question 4
Business Model Re-Design
a. Propose and describe a new business model for the solution to minimize the CAPEX for
the truck manufacturer. Provide description.

Business Model	Benefits
Application of cloud computing	This allows flexible allocation of resources
Self Service Customer Service	The customers can check and order the availability of stock in real-time thus acquire instant confirmation.
Production to overseas relocation	Relocation of production to overseas with low operating, production and workforce cost.
Engaging Third-Party Shipping for delivery to the customer	Reducing operation cost in delivering the trucks to the customer.
Relocate production to overseas	Relocating production overseas where there is lower labor, production and operating cost.
Offering the Truck as a service instead of a product	Truck consumed as a service at a price per year for a fixed subscription fee.
Using cloud computing	Applying cloud computing will enable flexibility in the allocation of resources as it is not fixed.

b. Propose and describe a new business model on how the tractor manufacturer can leverage
to increase his revenue. Provide description.
The manufacturer of tractor leverages the business model of IoT thus assist in increasing revenue
and analyze the delivery and collection to customer orders. Besides, it leverages the IoT
product’s unique elements and has immediate access to the environment where a customer is
located thus producing differentiated ad innovative value.

Business Model	Benefits
Security updated software	Protecting tractors from security check-ups like antivirus and malware costing exploited customer data.
Updating Remote Software	Offering constant update promoting the present features
Remote Diagnostics	The IOT device in the tractor collects timely and detailed information from the various field
Preventive maintenance	It monitors and tracks scheduled maintenance
Predictive Maintenance	It monitors the truck thus prevents malfunctioning

c. Create Return of Investment matrix- Cost based on the proposed IoT solution. Provide
table and description

Business Process	Benefits	Key Metric
Compliance	An effective auditing system identifying the compliance of the system	Compliance cost
Configuration Management	More accurate data installed and configured in the equipment	Managing the configuration cost
Enterprise Asset Management	Precise accurate data on the location of the equipment	Cost of Asset Management
Customer Service	A faster and effective response to the customer needs by training the agents	Length of the support call
Maintenance	Effective and predictive assistance and maintenance	Number of maintenance visits

d. Create Return of Investment matrix- Value-based for the proposed IoT solution. Provide
table and description.

Business Process	Benefits	Key Metric
Application of compliance and reporting app	Low cost of compliance with less violation risk	Compliance cost
Automated Service Process	Less disruption and more productivity like customers receiving payment and making quotations	Amount of hours spent on human interventions
Scheduling app to reserve machines.	Increase employee productivity; reduce lead-time and effort in reserving	Win ratio; adoption rate. (measure new customer vs.

 

machine. Example: Customers can schedule a reservation of tractors from the website.	existing customer)
Automated Service Process	Increase productivity and fewer man hours required. Example: Customers can request the tractor, receive a quotation and make payment immediately.	A number of hours that requires human intervention.
Usage reporting and compliance app	Lower cost of compliance; lower risk of violation Example: With the reporting of data of the tractors the company can track if they are compliant with industry standards	Cost of compliance

References
Chachin, P., 2017. IoT in transportation: connected and autonomous cars. ELECTRONICS:
Science, Technology, Business, (8), pp.154-158.
Ju, J., Kim, M. and Ahn, J., 2016. Prototyping Business Models for IoT Service. Procedia
Computer Science, 91, pp.882-890.
Weinberger, M., Bilgeri, D. and Fleisch, E., 2016. IoT business models in an industrial
context. at – Automatisierungstechnik, 64(9).
Yang, H., Zuo, Y. and Li, Y., 2013. IoT-Based 4PL: Prospects and Business Models. Applied
Mechanics and Materials, 273, pp.65-69.
Ziouvelou, X. and McGroarty, F., 2017. Business Models for Crowd-driven IoT Ecosystems: A
Review. International Journal of Computer & Software Engineering, 2(2).

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