Pardalis announces issuance of third U.S. patent

STILLWATER, Oklahoma, May 24, 2011 - Pardalis, Inc. announced today the award of a significant continuation patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It is the third patent issued by the USPTO that is relevant to the company’s key intellectual property, Common Point Authoring.

"There is a question commonly asked by information producers who participate in complex supply chains," said CEO and co-inventor Steve Holcombe. "That question is Who owns my data? The every increasing usage of unique identification as applied to both products and people is raising the level of consciousness of information producers about privacy and confidentiality. When the question is not answered to their satisfaction the result is missing or incomplete supply chain information. This has broad implications to the safety of products emanating from supply chains, supply chain efficiencies, value chain economics, supply chain risk analysis, etc. Frankly, this has broad implications to a global economy that is increasingly reliant upon the Internet for conveying trustworthy information."

"A significant reason for these deficiencies has been, as Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said that, "[t]he Web was originally conceived as a tool for researchers who trusted one another implicitly ...." That is, those collegial researchers didn’t concern themselves with data ownership and, consequently, trust mechanisms were not built into the Internet’s protocols."

"Over a decade ago Dr. Marvin Stone and I began creating a global patent portfolio for revealing the means and functions of immutable informational objects containing uniquely identified content. Our reason for doing so was that without immutable content there is really no way to efficiently begin to build trust into the Internet as we know it. Immutable objects had previously been used for networking efficiencies but not for introducing informational trust between content producers, particularly between supply chains participants and consumers."

"While our patents were initially distinguished – and rightly so - from networking efficiency patents held by companies like IBM and Microsoft it wasn’t until distinguishment from a seminal 1993 Xerox patent that the patent examiners really began to understand that Pardalis’ patents were part of a paradigm shift. Now with the fantastic work of Van Jacobson in Project CCNx at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a division of Xerox, we have a wonderful comparable in parallel. What Jacobson calls Content Centric Networking complimentarily overlaps with what we call Common Point Authoring."

Here’s an apropos quotation from Jacobson’s 2006 video, A New Way to Look at Networking (sponsored by Google):

"The biggest things is that you want all of your [uniquely identified] content to be immutable [because] once it's created, it goes out in the world, and you've lost control over it ….That means that if you want to update something, what you do is supersede it with a newer version, and that newer version should reference back to the old version, say hi, I'm the newer version of the [immutable content]. What you've got is probably obsolete. That means that wherever the data is, you can use it. You may have to do some work to find out that you've got the most recent copy of the most recent copy that's accessible to you ….. So, to do that, you want to be able to put sequence and time information, version number information and names. That's easy but something that you need to do and tie into the verification, authentication machinery."

"Earlier this year the World Economic Forum confirmed that content produced by companies and people represents a new economic asset but that the barriers restricting the movement of content through the Internet needs to be resolved. It’s very gratifying to know that Pardalis’ global patent portfolio is on the cusp of a paradigm shift in how the Internet will be used in the networking of trustworthy content."

The issued patent is entitled the Common Point Authoring System for the Complex Sharing of Hierarchically Authored Data Objects in a Distribution Chain, US Patent 7,949,668. Foreign filings relevant to the newly issued patent are being globally pursued and issued in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Europe, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and Mexico.

About Pardalis, Inc.

Pardalis' mission is to promote the granular sharing of confidential, trustworthy and traceable information along complex supply chains, and within the emerging data web, by empowering information owners and producers with innovative Common Point Authoring^TM methods. For more information, see A New Way of Looking at Information Sharing in Supply & Demand Chains.

The Bullwhip Effect (Part II)

Return to Part I

I ended Part I stating that industry had been essentially leaving the customer out of the equation, too. What I meant was that enterprise class systems like the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems offered by so many companies ...

... are a significant part of the problem.

Customer Relationship Management is about companies trying to manage their prospect and customer relationships. CRM systems contribute (or, maybe I should say, reinforce) one-up/one-down information sharing in supply chains and ipso facto the Bullwhip Effect. And Michael Hinshaw makes the point that even though billions have been spent on CRM over the last 15 years ($9+ billion in 2008 alone), overall customer satisfaction has remained flat. To the right is a simpler version of CRM.

The flip-side to CRM is envisioned to be Vendor Relationship Management (VRM). VRM would provide to people – individuals who recognize their value as customers, and wish to better define the terms of their relationships – the software, tools and ability to manage their vendor relationships, as well as their interactions and experiences.

To the left is a simple picture of VRM in which a consumer is able to conveniently manage multiple vendor relationships. The critical thought leadership for VRM is found with Doc Searls and the VRM Project at Harvard's Berkman Center but VRM in the marketplace still largely remains a vision.

Picking back up from Part I on the concept of viewing food safety regulators as a kind of consumer, and mashing together VRM (from the perspective of customers) with a whole chain traceability system for supply chains (from the perspective of food safety regulators) it would more or less have to look like this:

"OK," you say, "that's a nice, neat, REALLY simple picture but isn't this already happening on Facebook? Can't the Customer, Producer, Wholesaler, Retailer, and even the Government Regulators all become Facebook friends and experience right now this mashed-together vision of VRM and whole chain traceability? And isn't this what Social CRM is all about?"

No, no and ... no.

The challenge is not one of fixing the latest privacy control issue that Facebook presents to us. Nor is the challenge fixed with an application programming interface for integrating Salesforce.com with Facebook. The challenge is in providing the software, tools and functionalities for the discovery in real-time of proprietary supply chain data that can save people's lives and, concurrently, in attracting the input of exponentially more valuable information by consumers about their personal experiences with food products (or products in general, for that matter). Supply chain VRM (SCVRM)? Whole chain VRM (WCVRM)? Traceability VRM (TVRM)? Whatever we end up calling it, we know we will be on the right track when we see a flattening out of the Bullwhip Effect, won't we?

On the one hand, Facebook is highly relevant to this discussion because (a) it has over 500 million users, many of them businesses and government agencies, and (b) because it has helped to raise the expectations of its users regarding the availability of - and their hunger (no pun intended) for - real-time information. On the other hand, we are a long way from seeing headlines that read "Facebook immediately identifies and confirms source of salmonella contaminated peppers" or "Facebook tracks food ingredients in dioxin scare" or "Facebookers receive real-time e. coli food recall notices based on their hamburger actual purchases".* For that to happen, we need a few more ingredients added to the mix and one of them is the metadata ...

... by which each of the participants may be empowered to keep the degree of control over their data that will free it up for real-time access (and analysis) by others. Yes, it's ironic. Give more control to consumers so as to get more, better quality data from them about their experiences with food products? Makes perfect sense to Doc Searls and the VRM folks. They get that VRM is the ironic reflection of CRM.

The other ingredients? I'll finish up with those in the next - and final - journal entry. But I will say that I'll be returning to those interesting comments made by Walmart's Frank Yiannas .....

Continued in a final Part III.

_________

* Actually, for an example of an implementation that is technically achievable right now, see my earlier blog Consortium seeks to holistically address food recalls. Substitute in "Facebook" for "Food Recall Bank".

The Bullwhip Effect (Part I)

There were interesting comments made last fall at the second annual meeting of the Arkansas Association of Food Protection. The comments made by Frank Yiannas, Walmart's Vice-President of Food Safety, continue to resonate with me.

The first thing that struck me was Yiannas' belief that the U.S. is currently experiencing several food safety incidents per year on the scale of the Jack in the Box incident of the early 1990's. That's a chilling perception. In the e. coli epidemic of 1993, four children died and hundreds of others became sick in the Seattle area as well as California, Idaho and Nevada, after eating undercooked and contaminated meat from Jack in the Box. It was the largest and deadliest e. coli outbreak in American history up to that time.

Another takeaway was Yiannas' belief that the food industry is consequently experiencing a "global trust bust" when it comes to food safety. 

I've been thinking a lot about Yiannas' comments and here are some of my conclusions .... 

A significant reason for the continuing series of food safety crises (notwithstanding the recent passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act in the United States) is that the food industry's global and domestic supply chains are increasingly experiencing the Bullwhip Effect. This effect is directly attributable to the inefficiencies of one-up/one down supply chain information sharing.   

What do I mean by one-up/one down information sharing? The requirement of one-up/one-down means that vendors must know what is going on inside of their four walls which means they must know what is coming in and what is going out. Representative laws or regulations requiring one-up/one-down information sharing are: 

• EU General Food Law
• Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plans
• US Bioterrorism Act of 2002
• US Food Safety Modernization Act

Industry will tell you that one-up/one down information sharing is the way it's "always been done" in supply chains. It ignores, avoids or by-passes many or most of the efficiencies of computer networking and the Internet. It also avoids or by-passes many the thorny "data ownership" and privacy issues presented by the Internet. 

But the "global trust bust" in food safety is building a fire under the boiler, so to speak. And the boiler is reaching its boiling point. It's looking less and less like things can be done the way they've "always been done".

Food safety officials in a recall investigation are like consumers, albeit armed with law enforcement powers. The character above who is wielding the bullwhip could just as well be a consumer as a recall authority. The bullwhip, whether wielded by a consumer or a food saftey recall authority, is representative of a the effect of a demand.

When the Bullwhip Effect appears it is clear evidence of a less than optimal supply chain directly attributable to the inefficiencies of one-up/one-down information sharing. When a consumer makes a demand for a product, the Bullwhip Effect causes product restocking to take days, weeks, or longer ...

... similarly to how it takes days, weeks, or longer for a demand in a traceback investigation to provide the information required for determining (hopefully) the roots of the contamination and how pervasively contaminated a supply chain has become. A consumer who comes to a store to purchase a product that is out of stock causes a Bullwhip Effect in the supply chain. Similarly a food safety recall authority who comes to the store to find out why a customer became sick (or died) also causes a Bullwhip Effect in the supply chain.

OK, so you say, "What can be done about it?"

Well, the food safety recall authorities know what they want:

[T]he regulators want a traceability system that is consistent, speedy, covers the entire supply chain, has electronic records, has interoperable systems, and covers domestic and imported foods. ”

In other words, they want it all! The label they have given to what they want is a "whole chain" traceability system. A "whole chain" product tracing system consists of information elements provided by persons in the supply chain to other persons in the supply chain or to regulatory officials (e.g., during a traceback investigation). See Product Tracing Systems for Food, 74 FR 56843 (3 Nov 2009). To the right is a simple drawing of the real-time, "whole chain" monitoring that government regulators seek in order to overcome the Bullwhip Effect in food recalls.

To drill down a bit more, the government seeks to conduct real-time monitoring of the critical transactional events (CTEs) of supply chains.

And they want to see electronic one-up/one down transactional information sharing like this ...

... to become something more like this ....

The challenge for industry is that government wants "whole chain" traceability and, "[o]n top of that, [they want] industry to develop the tools and to pay for the system."

But that's a real challenge for industry if for no other reason than that the government regulators have left one critical player out of the CTE supply chain, that being ...

... the customer.

But then, come to think of it, industry has also essentially left the customer out of the equation.

Continued in Part II.