Milki-Way

A GIS enabled web-interface for Supply chain management

used in Commodity Distribution

By

Ashok Philip Verghese, Deepu R S , Shabeerali and Thomas Emmanual

Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management Kerala (IIITMK),

Park Center, Technopark, Kariavottam P.O. Trivandrum, Kerala - 695581 INDIA.

Tel: +91-471-2700777, Fax: +91-471-2527568.

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 CONTENTS

1. Executive Summary........................................... 3
1.1 Title of the project............................................ 3
1.2 Project Objectives............................................ 3
1.3 Project execution agency and address............. 3
1.4 Implementors and contact information........... 3
1.5 Project BLOG................................................. 3

2. Introduction and Roadmap................................ 4

3. The Problem...................................................... 4

4. High level description of technology used........ 5

5. Our approach to solving the problem................ 5

6. Deliverables....................................................... 7
7. Project Estimation.............................................. 7

References.............................................................. 8
List of Figures
1. Geneal outline of problem solution.................... 6
List of Tables
1. Activity time....................................................... 8

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1. Executive Summary:
1.1 Title of the project
Milki-Way- A GIS enabled web-interface for Supply chain
management used in Commodity Distribution

1.2 Project Objectives

To develop a web-based system with the help of GIS and database that helps
commodity manufactures and distributors retrieve information for decision making and
deliver products efficiently and cost-effectively.

1.3 Project execution agency and address

Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management Kerala (IIITMK),
Park Center, Technopark, Kariavottam P.O. Trivandrum, Kerala - 695581 INDIA.
Tel: +91-471-2700777, Fax: +91-471-2527568.

1.4 Implementors and contact information

This project is being proposed as part of Web Technology Course ITM 112-05

Project Members

1. Ashok Philip Verghese ashok-pg5@iiitmk.ac.in

2. Deepu R S deepu-pg5@iiitmk.ac.in
3. Shabeerali shab-pg5@iiitmk.ac.in
4. Thomas Emmanual thomas-pg5@iiitmk.ac.in

Project Guide

Mr. T Radhakrishnan
Chief Technology Officer, IIITM-K
1.5 Project BLOG
http://www.milki-way.blogspot.com/

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2. Introduction and Roadmap

Geographical Information System embeded with World Wide Web

technologies can provide solutions to numerous verticals, viz. Consumer Services,
Transportation,Logistics,Utilities,Tel-communication,etc. Such solutions specific to
supply chain management for commodity distribution will give highly effective
information retrieval for decision making for manufactures and central suppliers of
various products.
As a starting to implement such web-based system this document gives the
project proposal, with clear problem specification, deliverables, our approach to the
solution making, schedule estimation etc.
We hope that our initial we-based solutions will give powerful support for
decision making, analyzing and visualize information regarding product requirements of
geographical dispersed retailers in a district.

Road map: This section gives the road map to the rest of this document. The
Section 3, says about the problem to this project. Section 4 gives high level description
about the technology, development tools needed. Section 5 says brief idea to our
approach to problem solving. Section 6 gives the deliverables of project. Section 7 shows
the project estimation.

3. The Problem
Supply chain logistics is concerned with the relationships between suppliers and
customers and sales and production. Market demand uncertainty affects the performance
and behaviour of the planning processes used by production to satisfy sales. This
uncertainty and the resulting instability in the production schedules affect the
relationships with the suppliers and manufacturers. In addition items have to be
transported to the company and distributed to its customers. Improving the management
and operations of the relationships between a company and its suppliers, between the
buying, production and sales functions within the company and relationships between
production, distribution and customers are all areas of great concern. Companies are
concerned not only with their immediate first tier suppliers but also their second and third
tier suppliers, all of whom form a supply network.

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4. High level description of technology used

a) Open Source Map Server

There are several open source map servers with broad deployment and advanced
functionality, for example, Minnesota Mapserver, GeoServer and Deegree. All of them
have strong momentum and are able to be viable alternatives to proprietary map
servers.The Mapserver is not a full-featured GIS system, but provides enough core
functionalityto support a wide variety of web applications. It is primarily written in
C/C++, but it supports as well the scripting access to the Mapserver C API via popular
script languages such as PHP, Perl, Python Java etc. This cross-platform development
environment eases developing spatially enabled Internet applications

b) PostgreSQL:PostgreSQL is a free object-relational database server (database

management system), released under the flexible BSD-style license. It offers an
alternative to other open-source database systems (such as MySQL and Firebird), as well
as to proprietary systems such as Oracle, Sybase, IBM's DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server.

c) PostGIS:PostGIS is a geographic information system software program that adds

support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database.

d) Tomcat-5.5:Apache Tomcat is the servlet container that is used in the official

Reference Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies
e) JSP/Servlet, Javascript, HTML etc.

5. Our approach to solving the problem

A Web enabled GIS can play a major role in real time monitoring and decision
support for effectively tackling the problems associated with supply chain logistics su ch
as production scheduling , cost effective transportation.This system can be implemented
by using a centralized database which stores upto date information on all retailers from
various geographical locations.Using a Web enabled GIS we could calculate the optimum
path for transportation at the lowest cost in the given time.

The communities who use this system are classified into two :
1) Central Suppliers
2) Retailers.
Central suppliers are the major users of all the functionalities .They can view
all the orders for various commodities from various retails spread across
different locations.A centralised data base system is used to store all

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 information regarding all the retailers.The interface for the central suppliers
will provide a powerful map with layered information of retailers.They can
also generate reports based on different criteria.
Retailers can order different commodities through this web interface.They can
also acknowledge the delivery thruogh this interface.
We maintain a centralised database for keeping all information related to these
communities.

Retailer 1

Web
interface
Webserver for
+ Retailer n
Database retailers
Mapserver

Web
Information interface
regarding GIS for
various enabled central
retailers from interface suppliers
Central Supplier
different
locations

Figure 1
Geneal outline of problem solution

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6. Deliverables

(1) A web based interface for Retailers:

A system for the retailer to order various commodities , view the status order
,acknowledge the product delivery and to generate reports on daily basis.

(2) A web based interface for Central suppliers:

A system for the Central suppliers for procuring orders from various retailers
spread across a given location ,along with the facility to decide highly optimised
transportation route for further cost effectiveness .The system also generates
daily summary on all the orders ,also with the facility to add or remove retailers.

(3) Project Documentation:

The project report, which gives details on the project from inception to
implementation

(4) User Manual:

Online guidelines for using the web based interface

7. Project Estimation
Work Estimate
Individual members will devote three hours daily in weekdays and three hours in
weekends.

Weekdays: Time devoted = 4(members) * 3 Hrs = 12 Hrs

Weekends: Time devoted = 4(members) * 3 Hrs = 12 Hrs

12*3(days in weekdays) *8 (weeks in two months) +

12*3(days in weekend) *8 (weeks in two months) = 576 Hrs
Total days per person for the Project = 576 hours=24 days

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 Activities Time (in days per person)
Activity Days
Requirement Analysis 4
Research 3
System design 4
Implementation 7
Testing 2
Documentation 2
Deployment 2
Total 24

Table 1

References
[1] http://www.nucleusgis.com/engindex.asp
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/
[3]http://www.supplychainsites.com/
[4]http://www.geospatial-solutions.com/geospatialsolutions/
[5]http://www.geospatialtoday.com/