Contributions to Conferences

Creating an IoT-Game-Token for a Serious Game in Logistics

Abstract

Transparency is one of the key issues for improving the efficiency and security in supply chains. The Internet of Things (IoT) allows seamless interaction between objects anywhere at any time and allows the users to configure relevant services on the fly. Thus it is expected that a holistic implementation of IoT in supply chains will make a major contribution to improve the transparency and efficiency. However, the freight transport business has been hesitant about the implementation of this new concept. Beside the cost aspect and the difficulty of calculation the return on investment for one company, also the lack of knowledge about the IoT concept within the freight transport and the required organisational changes are barriers for a higher penetration. The imposed organisational changes impact on the companies daily operations, but are difficult to assess and comprehend in advance. Past experience in the vocational training and education has shown positive results by offering an experiential environment in which the participants can playful experiment with the new technologies and the new concepts, generate new ideas and eventually innovate with new services.
Based upon this experience, a game was designed that incorporates the practice use of the Internet-ofThings (IoT) technologies and incorporate modular IoT-tokens. The main objective of the game is to support knowledge gathering and understanding of IoT concepts and technologies in a safe environment as well as foster exploration of new services and experimentation with the underlying technologies. The hypothesis behind using IoT game tokens is that they improve the environment in such a way that players can experience and assess the potentials of IoT more deeply. This paper describes the observations that led to the creation of IoT-tokens based on an evolution of an existing IoT construction kit. Additionally, the design of the Serious Game which makes use of these tokens is drafted. The overall aim of this paper is to reach out to the interested community to discuss this approach, including both advantages and disadvantages.