Virtual private supply chain

• US 7,571,166 B1
• Filed: 11/30/2001
• Issued: 08/04/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/19/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: PTC Inc.
• Original Assignee: Click Acquisitions, Inc.
• Inventors: Hilferty, Thomas J., Orchard, Frank E., Flon, Lawrence, Davies, John Merrow, Casamento, Leslie, Tejolesmono, Lisayani, Casamento, Gary, Kumar, Mahendra, Anderson, Michael Gary
• Primary Examiner(s): ALAM, SHAHID AL
• Application Number:
  US09/998,613
• Time in Patent Office: 2,804 Days
• Field of Search: 709/203, 709/205, 709/225, 709/221, 707/9, 707/10, 707/200, 707/2, 707/6, 707/100, 707/104.1, 705/2, 705/7, 705/26, 705/28
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/10 File systems; File servers
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

A generic Internet based system for viewing supply chain data is provided. The system includes an Internet based data viewing engine and a data store that holds both viewable data and metadata associated with the viewable data. The metadata can be employed by the Internet based data viewing engine to control the presentation of the viewable data. The generic Internet based supply chain data viewing engine may be employed in a virtual private supply chain (VPSC). A VPSC includes a data acceptor that can receive supply chain data items from supply chain members, a supply chain data store that can store transformed, validated supply chain data items received from the supply chain members and a data accessor operable to selectively present supply chain data items stored in the supply chain data store to viewing supply chain members. One example of the data accessor is the generic Internet based viewing engine.

Claims

1. A virtual private supply chain computer system as between two or more supply chain members, comprising:

a data acceptor operable to receive one or more supply chain data items from one or more supply chain members;

a supply chain data store operable to store one or more supply chain data items received from one or more supply chain members storing the supply chain data items to conformed supply chain data with one or more common schema;

a viewing component for displaying the one or more supply chain data items from one or more supply chain members selectively viewing data relating to transactions between the supply chain members;

a data accessor operable to implement row-level supply chain security to selectively present one or more supply chain data items stored in the supply chain data store to one or more viewing supply chain members selectively permitting access to the conformed supply chain data based on the row-level security applied to the conformed supply chain data; and

a component that establishes one or more relationships within the supply chain data store between a first supply chain data item originating from a first supply chain member and one or more second supply chain items originating from one or more second supply chain members, the relationships within the supply chain data store being used with the data accessor and the viewing component to prevent the first supply chain member from viewing a row of data originating from the one or more second supply chain members.

2. The virtual private supply chain of claim 1 where an ownership identifier is established within the supply chain data store for one or more supply chain data items.

3. The virtual private supply chain of claim 2 where the supply chain data store is further adapted to facilitate establishing one or more access rights to supply chain data items.

4. The virtual private supply chain of claim 3 where the data acceptor is further adapted to transform the received supply chain data formatted according to a proprietary vendor schema converted to a virtual private supply chain (VPSC) schema to conform with one or more supply chain schema to facilitate collaborative, real-time exchange of supply chain data between multiple enterprises.

5. The virtual private supply chain of claim 4 where the data acceptor is further adapted to validate the transformed supply chain data.

6. The virtual private supply chain of claim 5 where the data acceptor is further adapted to load the validated supply chain data into the supply chain data store.

7. The virtual private supply chain of claim 1 where the data accessor implements the row-level supply chain security to prevent the first supply chain member from viewing a row of data originating from the one or more second supply chain members.

8. The virtual private supply chain of claim 7 where the row-level supply chain security employs at least one of menu level security limiting what menus the one of the supply chain members can view, secure socket layers (SSL), digital certificates and encryption.

9. The virtual private supply chain of claim 1 where the one or more supply chain members are configured in a hub and spoke configuration, with the supply chain members located at spokes and at least one of the data acceptor, the data accessor and the supply chain data store located at the hub.

10. The virtual private supply chain of claim 9 where at least one supply chain member implements a connection stream.

11. The virtual private supply chain of claim 10 where the connection stream is adapted to facilitate making communications between the hub and the spoke implementing the connection appear as a stream.

12. The virtual private supply chain of claim 11 where the connection stream is further adapted to facilitate sending, receiving and/or validating BIO'"'"'s.

13. The virtual supply chain of claim 12 where the connection stream is further adapted to facilitate selecting an encryption level to be applied to data communicated between the hub and the spoke implementing the connection stream.

14. The virtual private supply chain of claim 9 where one or more supply chain data items may be persisted at one or more spokes.

15. The virtual private supply chain of claim 14 where the persisted items are stored as BLOBS (Binary Large Objects).

16. A computer readable storage medium storing computer executable components of a virtual private supply chain comprising:

a data accepting component operable to receive one or more supply chain data items from one or more supply chain members;

a supply chain data storing component operable to facilitate storing of one or more supply chain data items received from one or more supply chain members and storing the supply chain data items to conformed supply chain data with one or more common schema;

a viewing component for displaying the one or more supply chain data items from one or more supply chain members selectively viewing data relating to transactions between the supply chain members;

a data accessing component operable to implement row-level supply chain security to selectively present one or more supply chain data items stored by the supply chain data storing component to one or more viewing supply chain members selectively permitting access to the conformed supply chain data based on the row-level security applied to the conformed supply chain data; and

a supply chain data storing component operable to establish one or more relationships within the supply chain data store between a first supply chain data item originating from a first supply chain member and one or more second supply chain data items originating from one or more second supply chain members, the relationships within the supply chain data store being used with the data accessing and viewing components to prevent the first supply chain member from viewing a row of data originating from the one or more second supply chain members.

17. A computer implemented method for providing a virtual private supply chain between two or more supply chain members using a computer readable storage medium storing computer executable acts, the method comprising the following computer executable acts:

centralizing supply chain data from a plurality of supply chain members;

conforming the supply chain data to one or more common schema;

displaying the one or more supply chain data items from one or more supply chain members selectively viewing data relating to transactions between the supply chain members;

selectively permitting access to the conformed supply chain data based on row-level security applied to the conformed supply chain data; and

establishing one or more relationships within the supply chain data store between a first supply chain data item originating from a first supply chain member and one or more second supply chain data items originating from one or more second supply chain members, the relationships between the supply chain data items being used with the displaying and the selectively permitting access steps to prevent the first supply chain member from viewing a row of data originating from the one or more second supply chain members.

18. A computer implemented method for providing a virtual private supply chain between two or more supply chain members using a computer readable storage medium storing computer executable acts, the method comprising the following computer executable acts:

accepting one or one or more supply chain data items from one or more supply chain members;

establishing one or more ownership identifiers for the supply chain data items;

establishing one or more access permissions for the supply chain data items;

transforming the supply chain data items to conform with one or more supply chain schema;

displaying the one or more supply chain data items from one or more supply chain members selectively viewing data relating to transactions between the supply chain members;

validating the transformed supply chain data items;

storing the validated supply chain data items in a supply chain data store;

establishing one or more relationships within the supply chain data store between supply chain data items received from two or more supply chain members; and

selectively permitting access to one or more supply chain data items based on at least one of the ownership of the supply chain data item, the one or more relationships associated with the supply chain data items, and the one or more access permissions associated with the supply chain data items, said ownership, said relationships, or said access permissions associated with the supply chain data items being used with said viewing step to prevent a supply chain member from viewing a row of data originating from the one or more other supply chain member of the two or more supply chain members.

19. A computer readable storage medium storing computer executable instructions operable to perform the method of claim 18.

20. A computer implemented method for providing a virtual private supply chain between two or more supply chain members using a computer readable storage medium storing computer executable acts, the method comprising the following computer executable acts:

collecting supply chain data from a plurality of supply chain members;

standardizing the collected supply chain data to one or more supply chain schema;

displaying the one or more supply chain data items from one or more supply chain members selectively viewing data relating to transactions between the supply chain members;

securely accessing the collected supply chain data; and

establishing within a supply chain data store one or more relationships between a first supply chain data item originating from a first supply chain member and one or more second supply chain data items originating from one or more second supply chain members, the relationships between the supply chain data items being used with the step of displaying and the step of securely accessing the collected supply chain data to prevent the first supply chain member from viewing a row of data originating from the one or more second supply chain members.