I finished my thesis and my studies in June 2001. After I will probably start a PhD still at the university of Karlsruhe, still with the goal to go to industry later on.

Overview
In order to supervise goods during transport from the supplier to the consumer we are trying to introduce a small digital device with a CPU, memory and sensors on it. This device has to control the goods and the resulting measuring values are stored in the device's memory. Once arrived at the product's final destination the device is automatically read out via infrared or any other possibly wireless communication and the data is transferred into the consumer's backend system (quality management system/ERP system). The backend system can then check the data. If they exceed certain limits alarm can be invoked and the damaged goods can instantly be returned to the supplier.

This system offers a continuous control over the goods and a seemless integration into the existing backend systems of the supplier as well as the consumer following the concepts of electronic commerce. The advantage is that the error rate is much lower as no manual transferring of data is needed any more. The goods supervise themselves, which results in the term "aware goods". The measurements of digital devices are also much more accurate than those of analogous ones. This offers better control and accurate values to present in insureance matters. The transferring of the values is accelerated and thus cost reducing.

For an overview over the problem an the program's architecture please take a look at my introductory slides.

For a more detailled description of the project please take a look at the aware goods project pages or take a look at the final slides.