AI-Powered Logistics with IBM Cloud
Key Points
- The demo showcases Acme Freight’s new logistics solution built on IBM Cloud, leveraging cognitive APIs and real‑time weather data to improve time‑sensitive medicine shipments.
- By integrating the Weather Channel API and IoT‑enabled trucks, the system can detect disruptive weather, suggest alternative routes, and dynamically onboard new drivers and vehicles.
- The architecture consists of multiple microservices deployed as Cloud Foundry apps, secured with an API gateway, and exposed through API Connect for web UI consumption.
- Core business logic is implemented with OpenWhisk serverless actions, enabling event‑driven processing and cost‑efficient scaling that runs only when needed.
- A secure gateway links the cloud services to existing on‑premises back‑end systems, allowing seamless data exchange and end‑to‑end logistics management.
Full Transcript
# AI-Powered Logistics with IBM Cloud **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vDh5npsBEs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vDh5npsBEs) **Duration:** 00:04:25 ## Summary - The demo showcases Acme Freight’s new logistics solution built on IBM Cloud, leveraging cognitive APIs and real‑time weather data to improve time‑sensitive medicine shipments. - By integrating the Weather Channel API and IoT‑enabled trucks, the system can detect disruptive weather, suggest alternative routes, and dynamically onboard new drivers and vehicles. - The architecture consists of multiple microservices deployed as Cloud Foundry apps, secured with an API gateway, and exposed through API Connect for web UI consumption. - Core business logic is implemented with OpenWhisk serverless actions, enabling event‑driven processing and cost‑efficient scaling that runs only when needed. - A secure gateway links the cloud services to existing on‑premises back‑end systems, allowing seamless data exchange and end‑to‑end logistics management. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vDh5npsBEs&t=0s) **Acme Freight Cloud Logistics Demo** - The demo illustrates how Acme Freight uses IBM Cloud services (Cloud Foundry, OpenWhisk, API Connect, and cognitive APIs) to manage time‑critical medicine shipments, incorporate real‑time weather data, and dynamically reroute resources when disruptions occur. ## Full Transcript
in this demo I'll cover traditional
logistics use case using a fictional
scenario and company Acme fraid first
we'll look at how Acme Freid uses
cognitive and cloud to roll out an
innovative solution to their
traditionally complicated problem and
then we'll dig into how Acme afraid uses
technologies on bluemix including cloud
foundry open whisk and api connect to
achieve the solution
Acme freight is a logistics vendor who
is responsible for the shipment of
critical time-sensitive medicines
fortunately Acme freight just rolled out
their new logistics was their
application on IBM cloud using IBM's
cognitive and cloud capabilities the app
can manage their distribution centers
and retail locations trucks and partners
as well as share real time information
about shipments to their customers it in
just weather data from The Weather
Channel API on IBM cloud to detect
disruptive weather events along planned
delivery routes the app tunisians uses
cognitive api's to suggest optimizations
to acnes resource planning and routing
will usefully districts wizard to
schedule a shipment of medicines to New
England we need to ship the drugs from
an acme distribution center in the
Midwest to Boston within two days now
let's see what happens if there's a
storm with cognitive api's logistics
wizard can suggest alternative routes
and trucks to steer clear of the storm
but the suggested alternatives won't
arrive within the two day window will
need to onboard new partners and trucks
that are using different routes an
independent driver just showed up near
North Dakota a truck driver used our
mobile application to register their
truck because the struck is instrumented
with IOT data if we decide to use this
truck for the shipment will see
real-time information about the shipment
of during the delivery I'll go ahead and
schedule the new delivery next we'll
spend a few minutes showing how IBM
cloud integration was able to bring
cloud and cognitive together to enable
actually afraid to apply this technology
let's start with the architecture
logistics wizard is composed of several
micro services including three cloud
foundry applications and the handful of
open risk actions api connected secure
gateway is used to allow connection to
the on-premises data and existing
back-end systems we then secure these
micro services with an
ðï gateway to make it available to them
on web UIs for example this is a cloud
foundry application built with the open
source loopback framework for quickly
creating AP is using loopback enabled me
to quickly create this application and
then expose parts of it as a managed api
using api connect in addition to the
Cloud Foundry micro services a lot of
the core logic is built using open with
serverless actions open which lets you
build event-driven applications using a
server let's architecture this allows
you to keep operating costs low and
quickly spin up and pay for these
applications only when needed
remember when Acme needed to onboard
they independent truck driver let's see
how easily we can use open lists to
create a new endpoint for the truck
driver to add report status
so I'll click develop in your browser
and then create a new action I'll name
it add chip and truck choose nodejs as
my language and click OK
now I'm ready to start coding my action
directly in the browser for the sake of
time I'm going to copy and paste from my
local editor and this action is just
some JavaScript code that logs into my
private API validates the payload and
submits the shipment when I could make
it live this immediately gives me a URL
that I can hit to trigger this action
next let's take it a step further and
turn this endpoint into a fully managed
API I'll use the new native API connect
capability in IBM bluemix I'll create a
new API and for the action I'll choose
the action that I just created
give it a path and then with just a few
clicks I can enable security and rate
limiting I can add a gateway to my Cloud
Foundry application just as easily with
other cloud providers send up this API
gateway and adding security and luige
limiting can take up to 37 steps it
takes under 30 seconds with IBM cloud
the logistics wizard application used in
this demo is available on github you can
fork the repository and modify to meet
your own use case just as acne for it
did you can even use the integrated
DevOps tool chain to build a complete
pipeline to deploy directly to IBM
bluemix