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Greenville Business Magazine

State of South Carolina Announces Partnership With Fraunhofer Institute

Nov 05, 2018 09:50AM ● By Kathleen Maris
The S.C. Department of Commerce announced a partnership between the state of South Carolina and the Fraunhofer USA Center for Experimental Software Engineering to bring state-of-the-art innovation to South Carolina industry and logistics providers.  

This applied research and innovation project will be achieved by collaboration between the University of South Carolina (USC), Fraunhofer USA, and two South Carolina firms — Datos Consulting and G&P Trucking. Focused initially on the development of a cloud-based platform and data cybersecurity for transportation companies, this project has the ability to be developed to include other modes of freight movement in the future.

The new cloud-based platform will provide a variety of services to logistics companies, including optimization of business processes, real-time decision making, risk management, and cybersecurity and privacy enforcement. To do this, researchers will collect and integrate data that is available from Internet of Things devices and external big data systems, such as weather information, economic factors, fuel prices, real-time traffic conditions, and social media.

Allowing for improved competitive advantages through resource optimization and cost reduction, this project is a bi-product of S.C. Commerce's ongoing partnership with the S.C. Council on Competitiveness, which leads the state's S.C. Logistics initiative. In total, the state's $32.9 billion logistics industry is comprised of more than 600 companies and 113,000 workers.

The S.C. Department of Commerce has committed $300,000 toward the project, which is being co-funded, in-kind, by Datos Consulting and G&P Trucking.

"We're so excited to be part of a project in an area, shipping and logistics, that is vital to the South Carolina economy," said Dr. Adam Porter, Fraunhofer USA Center for Experimental Software Engineering executive director. "Fraunhofer USA exists to turn cutting-edge research into processes, methods, and tools that help companies become much more successful. Our collaboration with the state of South Carolina, top researchers at USC, and forward-thinking South Carolina companies like Datos and G&P Trucking allows us to do exactly that."