Patent Application
20210383406
Any and all applications for which a foreign or domestic priority claim is identified in the Application Data Sheet as filed with the present application are hereby incorporated by reference under 37 CFR 1.57.
Generally described, a supply chain is a series of products in which earlier products in the chain are consumed in the manufacture of later products. A supply chain may begin, for example, with ingredients or raw materials (e.g., cows, grain, milk, tomatoes, etc.), which may be processed into intermediate products (e.g., ground beef, bread, cheese, tomato paste, etc.) and then further processed or combined into further products (e.g., a cheeseburger, canned pasta sauce, a frozen lasagna, etc.). Supply chains may include products sourced from a variety of different suppliers, who may have different facilities and manufacturing processes.
In some embodiments, supply chains may extend across state or national boundaries. Suppliers may therefore need to comply with different local regulations, including import and export regulations. In other embodiments, suppliers of products in a supply chain may have requirements that other suppliers must satisfy.
Throughout the drawings, reference numbers may be re-used to indicate correspondence between referenced elements. The drawings are provided to illustrate example embodiments described herein and are not intended to limit the scope of the disclosure.
Generally described, aspects of the present disclosure relate to supply chain management. More specifically, aspects of the present disclosure are directed to systems, methods, and computer-readable media related to a supply chain certification system. A supply chain certification system enables aggregation of raw materials into finished products. The system may be used, for example, to ensure that suppliers in a supply chain are able to certify that their products and/or manufacturing processes comply with various requirements, such as food safety regulations, export regulations, truth-in-advertising requirements (e.g., that products are organic, fair trade, sustainably grown, etc.), designations of origin or geographic region, or other characteristics that may or may not be preserved in a supply chain. In some embodiments, the supply chain certification system may present information to government entities, industry groups, or other parties that enables product composition to be analyzed and presented for certification purposes.
As used herein in various contexts, “supply chain” may refer to individual products that are delivered from one supplier to the next, to a series of such products, to the suppliers, to a “last” product that uses all or some of the prior products in the chain as ingredients or raw materials, or combinations thereof. For example, a supply chain may include a primary supplier of raw beef (e.g., a slaughterhouse or abattoir), a supplier that uses raw beef to make its products (e.g., a meat packing facility), a supplier that uses processed raw beef to make its products (e.g., an industrial food processor), and so forth. In some embodiments, supply chains that involve certain types of products (e.g., products of animal origin, plant origin, wines and spirits, etc.) may be subject to specific regulations and/or export requirements. It will also be understood that, although a number of the examples disclosed herein relate to products intended for human consumption, the present disclosure is not limited to a particular type of product. For example, the system may be used to certify that all of the manufacturers in a product's supply chain complied with certain labor standards or ethical practices.
Suppliers of products in these supply chains may therefore provide information to suppliers further down the chain (i.e., suppliers that consume the previous supplier's product as a raw material or ingredient in the manufacture of their own products) to confirm that the product that is ultimately consumed or exported has complied with regulations or export requirements at every part of the supply chain. However, suppliers may not receive information regarding their suppliers' suppliers further “up” the supply chain, and the information that a supplier passes “down” the supply chain to immediate consumers of its products may not be passed further on. Additionally, suppliers may maintain different and incompatible systems for managing compliance or certification data, and information may be lost in translation as it is passed from one supplier's system to another's.
To resolve these issues and ensure compliance with export regulations and other rules, a supply chain certification system may be implemented as described herein and used to certify compliance throughout a supply chain. The supply chain certification system may be implemented, in some embodiments, as an application programming interface (“API”) or other user interface that supplier systems may use to exchange information, and this system may be implemented as a system or record or source of truth for the supply chain. The supply chain certification system may provide documentation that certifies compliance with regulations to an export control system, and may provide individual suppliers with data that can be viewed, validated, and reused to ensure that the suppliers' suppliers are implementing, for example, approaches such as hazard analysis and critical control points (“HACCP”) to ensure that their products comply with food safety regulations.
Embodiments of the disclosure will now be described with reference to the accompanying figures, wherein like numerals refer to like elements throughout. The terminology used in the description presented herein is not intended to be interpreted in any limited or restrictive manner, simply because it is being utilized in conjunction with a detailed description of certain specific embodiments of the invention. Furthermore, embodiments of the invention may include several novel features, no single one of which is solely responsible for its desirable attributes or which is essential to practicing the inventions herein described.
The network 120 may illustratively be any wired or wireless network, or combination thereof. In addition, the network 120 may include, but is not limited to, a cellular telecommunications network, Wi-Fi network, cable network, satellite network, mesh network, personal area network, local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), public or private intranet, the Internet, or other public or private communications network or networks, or any combination thereof. In some embodiments, the network 120 may be a private or semi-private network, such as a corporate or university intranet. The network 120 may use protocols and components for communicating via the Internet or any of the other aforementioned types of networks. In some embodiments, the network 120 may be omitted, and one or more of the supplier computing devices 114A-C or the export control computing device 152 may communicate directly with the supply chain certification system 130.
The supply chain certification system 130 is described in further detail with reference to
The export control system 150 may generally be any system that receives and/or processes the output of the supply chain certification system 130. For example, the export control system 150 may be a system implemented by a government at an international border to control the export or import of goods from one country to another. In some embodiments, the export control system 150 includes an export control computing device 152, which interacts with the supply chain certification system 130 via the network 120. In other embodiments, the export control computing device 152 may be omitted, and supply chain certification information may be delivered to the export control system 150 via other channels (e.g., paper certificates).
It will be understood that the network environment 100 may include more (or fewer) elements than those shown in
At (2), the supplier interface module 136 may pass the received declarations to the certification module 140 and request that the certification module 140 process the declarations and attempt to certify the supply chain. As discussed above, “supply chain” may refer to the individual products that are delivered from one supplier to the next, to a set of such products, to the suppliers themselves, or to a “last” product that uses all or some of the prior products in the chain as ingredients or raw materials. For example, a supply chain may include cows that are delivered from a ranch to a slaughterhouse, raw sides of beef that are delivered from the slaughterhouse to a meatpacking plant, processed cuts of raw beef that are delivered from the meatpacking plant to an industrial food processor, and frozen meals containing beef that are made by the industrial food processor. The certification module 140, in various embodiments, may be used to certify that the frozen beef patties are organic, that the ground beef was properly handled at each stage of the supply chain, that the ranch engaged in “free range” practices and hence later products in the supply chain may so designate their products, and so forth.
At (3) the certification module 140 may request certification criteria from the product certification data store 132. Illustratively, the certification criteria may specify content that declarations must contain (e.g., a statement that the supplier complied with food regulations or used a specified manufacturing process), logical conditions (e.g., that an expiry date associated with a perishable product has not elapsed), or other criteria. At (4), the product certification data store 132 supplied the relevant certification criteria for the product(s) in question.
At (5), the certification module 140 requests information regarding the manufacturing process(es) used to produce the product(s). In some embodiments, the manufacturing process may be a recipe for preparing a particular product, and may specify that a certain amount of a particular ingredient or raw material is consumed when producing a unit of the product. For example, a manufacturing process may specify that producing a liter of olive oil requires at least five kilograms of olives, and thus a supplier who receives 500 kilograms of Italian olives and produces 200 liters of “Italian” olive oil has diluted or mislabeled their product. The manufacturing process and criteria may thus be used to detect supply chain issues. In other embodiments, the manufacturing process may specify a range of consumption or a maximum consumption (e.g., that producing a liter of olive oil requires five to six kilograms of olives), and the certification module 140 may identify a supplier who is making inefficient use of ingredients or raw materials in addition to determining whether the product should be certified. At (6), the manufacturing process data store 134 provides the information regarding the manufacturing process(es) used.
With reference now to
At (8), the certification module 140 reports the issue to the supplier interface module 136, which at (9) reports the issue to one or more of the supplier computing devices. In various embodiments, the supply chain certification system 130 may report the issue to the supplier of the product that could not be certified, to consumers of that product (e.g., suppliers who use the nonconforming product as an ingredient or raw material), to an export control system, or to other parties as needed.
In some embodiments, as described above, the supply chain certification system 130 may at (7) detect an inefficiency rather than a certification issue (e.g., that the amount of product manufactured is less than expected, given the raw materials consumed), and may report this inefficiency at (8) and (9). In other embodiments, the supply chain certification system 130 may detect and report that some criteria were satisfied and others were not. For example, the system 130 may report that a set of raw materials satisfied “organic” and “made in UK” criteria, but that a product made from these raw materials only satisfies the “organic” criterion, because the facility at which the raw materials were combined is not in the UK.
With reference now to
It will be understood that
At block 304, certification criteria and manufacturing process information may be obtained. As described above, certification criteria may include conditions that must be met, declarations that must be provided, and other criteria that must be satisfied in order for the product and/or the supply chain to be certified. Manufacturing processes may similarly provide information that enables verification that the outputs of a manufacturing process are consistent with the inputs, as described above.
At block 306, the next product in the supply chain may be selected. Illustratively, the first product in the supply chain will be selected the first time block 306 is carried out, the next product in the chain will be selected the second time block 306 is carried out, and so forth. In some embodiments, the routine 300 may be carried out to certify that a particular product may be certified, and the routine 300 may work backward from that product to the raw materials or ingredients at the start of its supply chain(s). In such embodiments, the supply chain may include branches for various products (e.g., milk, eggs, grain, etc.), each of which must be certified before the final product can be certified.
At decision block 308, a determination may be made as to whether the selected product meets the certification criteria. In some embodiments, as described above, whether a product meets criteria may depend on whether the preceding products in the supply chain meet the criteria. For example, a packaged salad may only be certified as organic if each of the individual ingredients (lettuce, carrots, etc.) can be certified as organic, or a child's stuffed animal may only be certified as “made in USA” if each of its components can be certified as such. In other embodiments (e.g., for the first product in the supply chain), the determination of whether the selected product meets certification criteria may be based on declarations or other information provided by the supplier. In other embodiments, satisfaction of the certification criteria may depend on whether the manufacturing process was followed.
If the determination at decision block 308 is that the product does not meet the certification criteria, then at block 310 the supplier(s) or consumer(s) of the product may be notified. Illustratively, a notification may be generated that the product did not meet a particular criterion, such as that the amount of product manufactured is not consistent with the amount manufacturable from the supplied ingredients, or that the supplier did not attest to its compliance with certain export regulations. If the determination at decision block 308 is that the product and/or the supplier did satisfy the certification criteria, then at decision block 312 a determination is made as to whether further products in the supply chain need to be evaluated. If so, then the routine 300 branches to block 306 and the next product is selected. In some embodiments, as discussed above, the routine 300 may be carried out for multiple branches of a supply chain that extends from a product, and may include multiple suppliers of ingredients, multiple consumers of the product, and so forth. If the determination at decision block 312 is that there are no further products to test, then at block 314 the supply chain (or, in some embodiments, a product) is certified as having met the certification criteria.
It will be understood that
As illustrated, the supply chain certification system 130 includes a processor 402, input/output devices 404, a network interface 406, and a data store 408, all of which may communicate with one another by way of a communication bus 401. The network interface 406 may provide connectivity to one or more networks (such as the network 120 of
The processor 402 may also communicate to and from a memory 420. The memory 420 may contain computer program instructions (grouped as modules or components in some embodiments) that the processor 402 may execute in order to implement one or more embodiments. The memory 420 generally includes RAM, ROM, and/or other persistent, auxiliary, or non-transitory computer-readable media. The memory 420 may store an operating system 422 that provides computer program instructions for use by the processor 402 in the general administration and operation of the supply chain certification system 130. The memory 420 may further store specific computer-executable instructions and other information (which may be referred to herein as “modules”) for implementing aspects of the present disclosure.
In some embodiments, the memory 420 may include the supplier interface module 136 and the export control interface module 138, which may be executed by the processor 402 to perform various operations, such as generating interfaces utilized by supplier computing devices 114 and export control computing devices 152. The memory 420 may further include the certification module 140, which may carry out routines (e.g., the example routine 300 depicted in
While the operating system 422, supplier interface module 136, export control interface module 138, and certification module 140 are illustrated as distinct modules in the memory 420, in some embodiments, the supplier interface module 136, export control interface module 138, and certification module 140 may be incorporated as modules in the operating system 422 or another application or module, and as such, separate modules may not be required to implement some embodiments. In some embodiments, the supplier interface module 136 and export control interface module 138 may be implemented as parts of a single application.
It will be recognized that many of the components described in
It is to be understood that not necessarily all objects or advantages may be achieved in accordance with any particular embodiment described herein. Thus, for example, those skilled in the art will recognize that certain embodiments may be configured to operate in a manner that achieves or optimizes one advantage or group of advantages as taught herein without necessarily achieving other objects or advantages as may be taught or suggested herein.
All of the processes described herein may be embodied in, and fully automated via, software code modules, including one or more specific computer-executable instructions, that are executed by a computing system. The computing system may include one or more computers or processors. The code modules may be stored in any type of non-transitory computer-readable medium or other computer storage device. Some or all the methods may be embodied in specialized computer hardware.
Many other variations than those described herein will be apparent from this disclosure. For example, depending on the embodiment, certain acts, events, or functions of any of the algorithms described herein can be performed in a different sequence, can be added, merged, or left out altogether (e.g., not all described acts or events are necessary for the practice of the algorithms). Moreover, in certain embodiments, acts or events can be performed concurrently, e.g., through multi-threaded processing, interrupt processing, or multiple processors or processor cores or on other parallel architectures, rather than sequentially. In addition, different tasks or processes can be performed by different machines and/or computing systems that can function together.
The various illustrative logical blocks and modules described in connection with the embodiments disclosed herein can be implemented or performed by a machine, such as a processing unit or processor, a digital signal processor (DSP), an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a field programmable gate array (FPGA) or other programmable logic device, discrete gate or transistor logic, discrete hardware components, or any combination thereof designed to perform the functions described herein. A processor can be a microprocessor, but in the alternative, the processor can be a controller, microcontroller, or state machine, combinations of the same, or the like. A processor can include electrical circuitry configured to process computer-executable instructions. In another embodiment, a processor includes an FPGA or other programmable device that performs logic operations without processing computer-executable instructions. A processor can also be implemented as a combination of computing devices, e.g., a combination of a DSP and a microprocessor, a plurality of microprocessors, one or more microprocessors in conjunction with a DSP core, or any other such configuration. Although described herein primarily with respect to digital technology, a processor may also include primarily analog components. A computing environment can include any type of computer system, including, but not limited to, a computer system based on a microprocessor, a mainframe computer, a digital signal processor, a portable computing device, a device controller, or a computational engine within an appliance, to name a few.
Conditional language such as, among others, “can,” “could,” “might,” or “may,” unless specifically stated otherwise, are otherwise understood within the context as used in general to convey that certain embodiments include, while other embodiments do not include, certain features, elements and/or steps. Thus, such conditional language is not generally intended to imply that features, elements and/or steps are in any way required for one or more embodiments or that one or more embodiments necessarily include logic for deciding, with or without user input or prompting, whether these features, elements and/or steps are included or are to be performed in any particular embodiment.
Disjunctive language such as the phrase “at least one of X, Y, or Z,” unless specifically stated otherwise, is otherwise understood with the context as used in general to present that an item, term, etc., may be either X, Y, or Z, or any combination thereof (e.g., X, Y, and/or Z). Thus, such disjunctive language is not generally intended to, and should not, imply that certain embodiments require at least one of X, at least one of Y, or at least one of Z to each be present.
Any process descriptions, elements or blocks in the flow diagrams described herein and/or depicted in the attached figures should be understood as potentially representing modules, segments, or portions of code which include one or more executable instructions for implementing specific logical functions or elements in the process. Alternate implementations are included within the scope of the embodiments described herein in which elements or functions may be deleted, executed out of order from that shown, or discussed, including substantially concurrently or in reverse order, depending on the functionality involved as would be understood by those skilled in the art.
Unless otherwise explicitly stated, articles such as “a” or “an” should generally be interpreted to include one or more described items. Accordingly, phrases such as “a device configured to” are intended to include one or more recited devices. Such one or more recited devices can also be collectively configured to carry out the stated recitations. For example, “a processor configured to carry out recitations A, B, and C” can include a first processor configured to carry out recitation A working in conjunction with a second processor configured to carry out recitations B and C.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 63036344 | Jun 2020 | US |
