Requirements on unique identifiers for managing product lifecycle information: comparison of alternative approaches

Managing product information for product items during their whole lifetime is challenging, especially during their usage and end-of-life phases. The main difficulty is to maintain a communication link between the product item and its associated information as the product item moves over organizational borders and between different users. As network access will typically not be continuous during the whole product-item lifecycle, it is necessary to embed at least a globally unique product identifier (GUPI) that makes it possible to identify the product item anytime during its lifecycle. A GUPI also has to provide a linking mechanism to product information that may be stored in backend systems of different organizations. GUPIs are thereby a cornerstone for enabling the Internet of Things, where 'intelligent products' can communicate over the Internet. In the current paper, we analyse and compare the three main currently known approaches for achieving such functionality, i.e. the EPC Network, DIALOG and WWAI.