Supply Chain Digital Hub for Context-Aware Disruption Response
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current supply chain management systems lack an end-to-end comprehension of supply chain networks and events, leading to fragmented representations and assumptions among different applications, resulting in underperforming or incorrect decisions, especially when collaborating with both competitors and collaborators, which can break supply chain partnerships and lead to significant value loss.
Innovation Solution
A digital hub that integrates inter- and intra-enterprise data with external sources, utilizing machine learning, autonomous intelligent software agents, and natural language processing to provide context-aware insights and support business goal-aware planning, inventory, and capacity sharing, while connecting external data sources such as social media, geopolitical, and weather data to enhance supply chain visibility and collaboration.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If supply chain applications operate in silos with separate data representations, then each application maintains its own data integrity and security, but the overall supply chain network lacks end-to-end comprehension and produces fragmented decisions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a digital hub as an intermediary layer between siloed supply chain applications. This hub receives data from multiple applications, standardizes representations using schemas, and distributes contextualized information back to applications. The hub acts as a mediator that enables end-to-end network comprehension while preserving the independence and data integrity of individual applications through standardized interfaces.
2Productivity
If planners collaborate across supply chain entities, then better collective decisions can be made, but inconsistent representations and assumptions lead to underperforming or incorrect decisions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transforms data representations by applying standardized schemas that define consistent parameters, units, and relationships across all supply chain entities. The digital hub validates and normalizes data parameters from different sources, ensuring that planners collaborate with aligned assumptions and representations. This parameter standardization enables accurate cross-entity decision-making while maintaining the ability to handle diverse data sources.
3Adaptability or versatility
If supply chain entities share data and plans, then collaboration and value creation improve, but lack of clear business objectives representation breaks partnerships and causes value loss
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a universal digital hub platform that serves multiple supply chain entities with different business objectives simultaneously. The hub provides multi-functional capabilities including data exchange, plan coordination, event notification, and objective alignment. By offering a universal platform that accommodates diverse entities while enforcing consistent data representations and business objective models, the system enables collaboration without requiring entities to sacrifice their individual goals.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method are disclosed including a digital hub and a cloud database. The digital hub encodes, as a virtual supply chain network, the structure, one or more objectives, and one or more states of a supply chain network and contextualizes data received from one or more supply chain entities and one or more external data sources with the virtual supply chain network. The digital hub further employs machine learning to extract insights from the contextualized data and monitors external data sources for an event that may impact the one or more objectives of the supply chain network. Responsive to identifying an event that may impact the one or more objectives, the digital hub automatically adjusts one or more of robotic warehouse systems, robotic inventory systems, automated guided vehicles, mobile racking units, automated robotic production machinery, and robotic devices.