Patent Application
20070156511
Whether mentally-based, paper-based, computer-based, or a combination thereof, virtually every business organization follows a set of business processes, and most business organizations attempt to gage the effectiveness of their business processes. For example, a grocery store may use a particular business process to inspect incoming goods, such as the inspection of a certain percentage of the cases of a product that comes into the store. If the product is olive oil, the store may do a quality check on parameters such as clarity, viscosity, aroma, and taste. Each time that a case is tested, these parameters will be measured. As another example, a business organization that employs one or more contract employees may check on a periodic basis to determine if the employees are carrying out the terms of the contract—i.e., is the employee present, did the employee show up on time, and did the employee fulfill the duties of the contract on a particular day. Therefore, whatever the business organization, such quality assurance checks may be made on a periodic basis and the results may be recorded.
In carrying out their inspection processes, these business organizations may be exposed to special circumstances that do not normally occur with every inspection. For example, in the situation of the grocery store examining the olive oil, there may be times when one or more bottles in a case are broken. Similarly, in the example relating to an employee contract, an employee may not have showed up for work because the employee may have died. The art is in need of a system that can analyze business processes and handle specialized circumstances in a standardized manner.
In an embodiment, a computer-based process is configured to execute a business process based on a set of rules. The computer-based process is further configured to execute the business process based on a deviation from the set of rules. The set of rules is applicable to the business process, and the deviation from the set of rules is at times applicable to the business process. One or more correction activities can be implemented by analyzing the deviations from the set of rules.
In the following description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings that form a part hereof, and in which is shown by way of illustration specific embodiments which may be practiced. These embodiments are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice the invention, and it is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized and that structural, logical and electrical changes may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention. The following description is, therefore, not to be taken in a limited sense, and the scope of the present invention is defined by the appended claims.
The functions or algorithms described herein are implemented in software or a combination of software and human implemented procedures in one embodiment. The software comprises computer executable instructions stored on computer readable media such as memory or other type of storage devices. The term “computer readable media” is also used to represent carrier waves on which the software is transmitted. Further, such functions correspond to modules, which are software, hardware, firmware or any combination thereof. Multiple functions are performed in one or more modules as desired, and the embodiments described are merely examples. The software is executed on a digital signal processor, ASIC, microprocessor, or other type of processor operating on a computer system, such as a personal computer, server or other computer system.
In the course of these evaluations using the inspection rule 105, the sampling procedure 110, and the quality code hierarchy 115, a situation may arise that while not completely unexpected, does not occur all the time and hence does not have to be addressed in each sample of the goods. For example, referring again to olive oil, while the two bottle sample of olive oil is always susceptible to a color, clarity, taste, and aroma analysis, a defect such as a broken bottle, while it invariably will occur at some point in time, will more than likely not happen in every sample. However, when such a situation occurs, one or more embodiments handle this by invoking a Dependent Object (DO) Deviation 120. The DO Deviation 120 uses another set of rules in the quality code hierarchy 115 to address deviation situations such as a broken bottle of olive oil. The code pertaining to the broken bottle of olive oil, or a code from the hierarchy 115 to identify other deviations, is used throughout the system. Because these deviations are strictly identified and used throughout the system, this imparts consistency and repeatability to the system. The results of the inspection rule 105 and the deviation 120 may be recorded, and these results may be analyzed over a period of time and trends or problems with certain manufacturers, suppliers and/or distributors may be identified and addressed. One advantage of the codes in the hierarchy 115 is that they address a free text problem. The free text problem relates to situations in which the same or similar deviations are described by different individuals using different text, thereby resulting in inconsistencies throughout the system. However, by using the code hierarchies 115, the same description for a particular event is logged all the time, thereby eliminating the inconsistency problem.
The codes in the hierarchy 115 relating to a deviation 120 contain and convey detailed information about the occurrences of the deviation. In an embodiment, the details of a deviation are cataloged and identified by a code.
In another embodiment, the foundation layer 100 illustrated in
While certain embodiments have been described in relation to specific examples such as in connection with the inspection of product in a grocery store (inventory quality inspection) and employee contract verification, it is noted that the invention is not limited to these two examples. Embodiments may be applied to virtually any business process, such as invoice checking and customer relations management (CRM), to monitor and evaluate those processes.
Moreover, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the invention may be practiced with other computer system configurations, including hand-held devices, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, network PCS, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like. The invention may also be practiced in distributed computer environments where tasks are performed by I/O remote processing devices that are linked through a communications network. In a distributed computing environment, program modules may be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.
In the embodiment shown in
As shown in
The system bus 23 can be any of several types of bus structures including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of a variety of bus architectures. The system memory can also be referred to as simply the memory, and, in some embodiments, includes read-only memory (ROM) 24 and random-access memory (RAM) 25. A basic input/output system (BIOS) program 26, containing the basic routines that help to transfer information between elements within the computer 20, such as during start-up, may be stored in ROM 24. The computer 20 further includes a hard disk drive 27 for reading from and writing to a hard disk, not shown, a magnetic disk drive 28 for reading from or writing to a removable magnetic disk 29, and an optical disk drive 30 for reading from or writing to a removable optical disk 31 such as a CD ROM or other optical media.
The hard disk drive 27, magnetic disk drive 28, and optical disk drive 30 couple with a hard disk drive interface 32, a magnetic disk drive interface 33, and an optical disk drive interface 34, respectively. The drives and their associated computer-readable media provide non volatile storage of computer-readable instructions, data structures, program modules and other data for the computer 20. It should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that any type of computer-readable media which can store data that is accessible by a computer, such as magnetic cassettes, flash memory cards, digital video disks, Bernoulli cartridges, random access memories (RAMs), read only memories (ROMs), redundant arrays of independent disks (e.g., RAID storage devices) and the like, can be used in the exemplary operating environment.
A plurality of program modules can be stored on the hard disk, magnetic disk 29, optical disk 31, ROM 24, or RAM 25, including an operating system 35, one or more application programs 36, other program modules 37, and program data 38. A plug in containing a security transmission engine for the present invention can be resident on any one or number of these computer-readable media.
A user may enter commands and information into computer 20 through input devices such as a keyboard 40 and pointing device 42. Other input devices (not shown) can include a microphone, joystick, game pad, satellite dish, scanner, or the like. These other input devices are often connected to the processing unit 21 through a serial port interface 46 that is coupled to the system bus 23, but can be connected by other interfaces, such as a parallel port, game port, or a universal serial bus (USB). A monitor 47 or other type of display device can also be connected to the system bus 23 via an interface, such as a video adapter 48. The monitor 40 can display a graphical user interface for the user. In addition to the monitor 40, computers typically include other peripheral output devices (not shown), such as speakers and printers.
The computer 20 may operate in a networked environment using logical connections to one or more remote computers or servers, such as remote computer 49. These logical connections are achieved by a communication device coupled to or a part of the computer 20; the invention is not limited to a particular type of communications device. The remote computer 49 can be another computer, a server, a router, a network PC, a client, a peer device or other common network node, and typically includes many or all of the elements described above I/O relative to the computer 20, although only a memory storage device 50 has been illustrated. The logical connections depicted in
When used in a LAN-networking environment, the computer 20 is connected to the LAN 51 through a network interface or adapter 53, which is one type of communications device. In some embodiments, when used in a WAN-networking environment, the computer 20 typically includes a modem 54 (another type of communications device) or any other type of communications device, e.g., a wireless transceiver, for establishing communications over the wide-area network 52, such as the internet. The modem 54, which may be internal or external, is connected to the system bus 23 via the serial port interface 46. In a networked environment, program modules depicted relative to the computer 20 can be stored in the remote memory storage device 50 of remote computer, or server 49. It is appreciated that the network connections shown are exemplary and other means of, and communications devices for, establishing a communications link between the computers may be used including hybrid fiber-coax connections, T1-T3 lines, DSL's, OC-3 and/or OC-12, TCP/IP, microwave, wireless application protocol, and any other electronic media through any suitable switches, routers, outlets and power lines, as the same are known and understood by one of ordinary skill in the art.
The Abstract is provided to comply with 37 C.F.R. §1.72(b) to allow the reader to quickly ascertain the nature and gist of the technical disclosure. The Abstract is submitted with the understanding that it will not be used to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims.
