Challenge:
Awareness of anomalies and inefficiencies in manufacturing, shipping, and the asset tracking process
Solution:
Automate business rules and decision logic to detect and respond to threats and anomalies
Results:
Key personnel are notified in real-time of relevant changes in the manufacturing, shipping, or asset tracking process
Challenge
Organizations with complex manufacturing, shipping, and asset tracking processes must be continually aware of key business events that effect operations, brand quality, profitability and customer satisfaction. These business events may span multiple systems, facilities, time, and geography – making awareness of key changes extremely difficult. Multi-point distribution systems introduce complexity in the form of the need to track shipment and receipt of goods, compounded by the additional requirement to track location, time, and even temperature using RFID or other forms of sensors. From lost shipments to the infusion of counterfeit goods into the supply chain, both manufacturers and consumers of goods are paying the price. The volume, velocity, and volatility of data in the event-rich supply chain environment presents formidable challenges to detecting anomalous events and initiating corrective responses.
Solution
Agent Logic’s enterprise software, RulePoint®, gives organizations a comprehensive way to automatically correlate and detect threats occurring across the supply chain—and invoke responses to further investigate or rectify key situations. Through an easy-to-use web based interface, RulePoint® allows users to capture and automate business rules and decision logic that was once manual and labor intensive—not to mention untimely. RulePoint® receives data from various systems and applies the business rules and decision logic on the data as events occur or change. When business events are analyzed and correlated with other key data points or events, and an anomaly is detected, RulePoint® generates an alert and sends it to the appropriate person for remediation or initiates changes and transactions across other systems as appropriate.
Results
The detection of anomalies, such as time delays, geospatial boundary infractions, exceeding temperature thresholds, or identifying potential counterfeit operations, are performed automatically with RulePoint®. Identifying business opportunities or threats to the supply chain no longer requires manually sifting through data—it is performed on-the-fly. Alerts, enriched with supporting data and suggested responses, are delivered instantly to decision-makers for immediate action. Enterprise agility is increased because business rules and decision logic can be adapted quickly and easily through web-based forms, without involving technical support, thus enabling companies to improve customer satisfaction, profitability, and logistics efficiency.
Agent Logic’s software keeps key individuals proactively informed of critical logistical activity including transactional information, product shipment details, timing and location discrepancies, isolated or unaccounted for goods, and more. No longer must anomalies associated with distribution activities be limited to “arrived,” “late,” or “no arrival” indicators leaving more complex problems to be identified manually or after-the-fact—or undetected. RulePoint® automates analysis of the current events, often correlating these events with past data point or external data source to identify up to the minute discrepancies that can be acted upon. For example, it is now possible for end-users to both identify and respond when a shipment of perishable pharmaceuticals is exposed to a non-compliant temperature or when a palette of pharmaceuticals “goes off the radar” in a known area of counterfeit operations whereby a follow up investigation is warranted to inspect the goods. With the increased potential risks of supply chain infiltration by potential terrorist operations and the looming threat of nuclear, biological, or chemical attacks, the need for automated anomaly detection is greater than ever.