Supply Chain Analysis Gets Patent

Cold-chain service company patents system to analyze supply chain data

Sean Murphy, Associate Editor -- Supply Chain Management Review, 9/26/2007 12:24:00 PM

BEVERLY, Mass. — A company has developed an approach to supply chain analysis that the government says is so unique, it has its own patent.

Sensitech, Inc. has developed a process described on the U.S. Patent Office’s Web site as “Automated identification of anomalous conditions in supply chain processes.” The process was declared patented by the office on July 31.

“A product supply chain may be viewed not just as a series of discrete, unrelated shipment transactions, but as a ‘process’ (or pipeline) that can be subject to statistical process control,” the entry for the company’s patent reads. “The present invention is … for collecting data concerning one or more aspects of a supply chain, for performing statistical analysis on the collected data … and for communicating the results of such statistical analysis to those responsible for the supply chain.”

The patent entry indicates the process is used to help search for anomalies or problems in a supply chain. Rupert Schmidtberg, Sensitech’s chief technical officer, and Jeff Leshuk, general manager of Sensitech’s Professional Services Group, applied for the patent.

In a recent interview, Schmidtberg said the company, which provides supply chain products and services geared toward cold-chain operations, has been working on the process for the past five years. 

One motivator for development of the process, he said, was a noted increase in the amount of data coming in from increasingly complex supply chains run by Sensitech’s customers. “It’s specifically designed to handle very large amounts of information,” Schmidtberg said of the process.

How large? Right now, the process can crunch numbers from supply chains running hundreds of thousands of shipments per year, and Schmidtberg said he is confident his process can handle supply chains with shipments numbering in the millions. “Without these tools, we would be very challenged to take on those projects,” he said.

Schmidtberg said the process is used to analyze supply chains from “a significant number” of Sensitech’s 3,000 customers worldwide.

Elizabeth Darragh, a marketing director at Sensitech, said analyzing every scrap of data, no matter how numerous or innocuous, is good business practice in any supply chain, but it is absolutely critical in cold-chain related supply chains, where products depend on issues such as temperature management.

“It’s not just what happens with one or two shipments,” she said. “It’s what happens with one or two hundred shipments.”

Darragh said recent news stories describing recalls and food contamination highlight the need to pay closer attention to every step of the supply chain — something the new patented process is designed to help do.

As an example, Darragh said produce companies, such as a Sensitech client company she declined to name on the West Coast which makes bagged ready-to-eat salads, have a lot to worry about. Some food products, such as meats, are usually cooked thoroughly, a preventive failsafe method Darragh referred to as a “kill step,” but customers eating salads raw straight out of the package don’t have that luxury.

“When you talk fresh, there is no kill step,” she said.

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