Towards logistics 4.0: an edge-cloud software framework for big data analytics in logistics processes

Logistics 4.0 aims at enabling the sustainable satisfaction of customer demands with optimised costs of services with the use of emerging technologies, such as Internet of Things, streaming analytics, and optimised decision making. The availability of massive sensor data streams over time opens new perspectives for extracting meaningful and timely insights from data-in-motion through streaming analytics. Logistics 4.0 is a relatively new field of research which demands the development of scalable and efficient software solutions and their deployment to successful real-life case studies. In this paper, we propose a software framework for streaming analytics in an edge-cloud computational environment aiming at covering the whole data analytics lifecycle in logistics processes and thus, advancing the evolution and realisation of the Logistics 4.0 concept. The proposed framework takes advantage of edge computing technologies, streaming analytics and proactive decision making in order to monitor, analyse and support decision making in the frame of Logistics 4.0. It is applied and evaluated in a maintenance service logistics use case from the aerospace industry.