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Supplier performance reportingRelated Patent Categories: Data Processing: Financial, Business Practice, Management, Or Cost/price Determination, Automated Electrical Financial Or Business Practice Or Management Arrangement, Operations Research, Market Analysis, Demand Forecasting Or SurveyingSupplier performance reporting description/claimsThe Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20060111966, Supplier performance reporting. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] This invention relates to a system and method for reporting supplier on-time performance and a system and method for reporting supplier reject performance. [0002] Supplier on-time performance is typically reported as a percentage of orders that are delivered within a specified period of time with respect to a standardized start point and end point. In order to measure the amount of time that a supplier takes to deliver product in response to an order, a "start point," i.e. an event triggering the start of a time period used to measure delivery time, must be identified. An "end point," i.e., an event triggering the end of the time period used to measure delivery time, must also be identified. Typically, the possible start points used for measuring delivery time include: the time at which the buyer placed the order ("order sent" or "OS"), the time at which the supplier received the order ("order received" or "OR"), and the time at which the supplier confirmed the order with the buyer ("order confirmed" or "OC"). Possible end points that might be used for measuring delivery time are, for example, the arrival time of the supplier shipment at one of the following: the customer's receiving dock ("CRD") (note, the terms "customer" and "buyer" are used interchangeably herein); the customer's final destination ("CFD", e.g. customer storeroom, customer assembly line, customer mail stop); the origin transport on board ("OTO", i.e., loaded onto the shipping vehicle at the origin); destination transport onboard ("DTO", i.e. when the shipping vehicle arrives at its destination country); destination customs inbound ("DCI", i.e. arrival at customs in the destination country prior to customs processing); destination customs outbound ("DCO", i.e., point at which customs processing in the destination country is completed); or the supplier shipping dock ("SSD"). [0003] Existing supplier performance reporting systems generally pick a single start point and a single end point to use as the standardized start and end points for determining the time period against which to measure whether or not a delivery is "on time." Such systems require users to report on time performance using a standardized start and end point. This approach has at least two disadvantages. First, the customers that are providing on-time delivery data for use by such systems may not ordinarily track delivery times using the standardized start point and end point required by the system. Thus, customers may have to adjust existing internal procedures in order to report delivery time data that is useable by such systems. A second disadvantage of such systems is that customers whose businesses place an importance on delivery times using start and end points different from those used by the reporting system will not be able to gauge the performance of suppliers in a manner that is consistent with the particular business needs of such customers. [0004] Existing supplier performance reporting systems also typically report the percentage of orders that are returned. However, existing systems simply report "reject performance" as a percentage of total orders that are returned without distinguishing between whether the return was supplier caused or customer caused. In some contexts, it may be useful for users of a supplier performance reporting system to know how many returns were caused by the supplier and how many were caused the customer. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION [0005] The present invention addresses some of the problems of prior supplier performance reporting systems. An aspect of a present embodiment receives and processes data to enable reporting of on-time performance relative to a plurality of order start point/end point pairs. Customers and suppliers report on-time performance for system processing using the delivery start and end points collected in the normal course of their business operations. System users may obtain supplier on-time performance reports indicating the on-time performance of suppliers relative to the plurality of start point/end point pairs reflected in the collected data. [0006] Another aspect of a present embodiment collects transaction information predictive of whether an order reject was supplier caused or customer caused. The predicted cause of order rejects is reflected in supplier reject performance as reported by a system implementing this aspect of the present invention. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS [0007] The novel features of the invention are set forth in the appended claims. However, for purpose of explanation, several aspects of an embodiment of the invention are described by reference to the following figures. [0008] FIG. 1 is a system level view of the basic components and data flow in a system that may be used to implement an embodiment of the present invention. [0009] FIG. 2a is a table illustrative of Basic Purchase Order Data provided by a customer/buyer computer system. [0010] FIG. 2b is a table illustrative of Summarized Purchase Order Data stored in system 10 of FIG. 1. [0011] FIG. 3 is a process diagram illustrating steps for converting the Basic Purchase Order Data of FIG. 2a into the Summarized Purchase Order Data of FIG. 2b. [0012] FIG. 4 is a sample supplier performance report that may be generated by the system of FIG. 1. [0013] FIG. 5 is a process diagram illustrating steps for creating a supplier performance report from Summarized Purchase Order Data. [0014] FIG. 6 is a sample reject performance report that may be generated by the system of FIG. 1. [0015] FIG. 7 is a flow diagram illustrating the use of transaction data to predict whether an order reject is supplier caused or customer caused. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS [0016] In the following description, numerous details are set forth for purpose of explanation. However, one of ordinary skill in the art would realize that the invention may be practiced without the use of these specific details. In other instances, well-known structures and devices are shown in block diagram form in order not to obscure the description of the invention with unnecessary detail. [0017] FIG. 1 shows a system 10 that may be used to implement the present invention. System 10 comprises one or more computers. System 10 includes at least one processing element and at least one memory storage element. The one or more computers of system 10 will have access to executable instruction code in an electronically readable medium (code and medium not separately shown). The electronically readable medium may be any medium that either stores or carries electronic signals (including signals referred to as electrical signals and signals referred to as electromagnetic signals). The executable instruction code in an electronically readable medium directs the illustrated one or more computers to carry out various tasks described herein. The executable code for directing the carrying out of tasks described herein would be typically realized in software. However, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, that some computers might utilize code realized in hardware to perform many of the identified tasks without departing from the present invention. [0018] System 10 is communicatively connected (either periodically or continuously) to computer systems at various subscribers including buyers and/or suppliers including systems 11a, 11b, and 11c. System 10 is also be communicatively connected to web portal 12. Web portal 12 is a computer or group of computers that makes information from system 10 available over the Internet to one or more subscribers. Although FIG. 1 illustrates a system that makes supplier performance information available to subscribers over the Internet, supplier performance reports may be generated by system 10 and provided to subscribers through other delivery mechanisms, such as, for example, by fax. [0019] Blocks 10-1 to 10-7 and associated arrows indicate the processing and data flow of system 10. At block 10-1, data is received relevant to either basic purchase order data or summarized purchase order data (see FIGS. 2a, 2b, and 3 and accompanying text) from systems 11a, 11b, and 11c. This basic or summarized data may be received through a periodic batch update process or through a persistent connection that provides real time updating of system 10's stored data. Summarized purchase order data is derived from basic purchase order data using process 30 as illustrated and described in FIG. 3 and accompanying text. That process may be performed either on subscriber system 11a, 11b, and 11c or at system 10. If process 30 is performed on a subscriber system, system 10 will receive summarized purchase order data, if process 30 is performed at block 10-1 of system 10, then system 10 will receive basic purchase order data. Received data, whether summarized or basic, is converted at block 10-1 for storing in the common data base stored at block 10-3. Aside from converting any basic data received to summarized data, system 10 also transforms data using known techniques to ensure data integrity. Those skilled in the art will recognize that, for example, values relevant to primary keys (i.e. fields whose data uniquely identifies each row) may need to be added to the received data to ensure that new data added to stored data is uniquely identified in the data base (e.g., if incoming summarized data has a field for "record number" and record number values in received data repeat pre-existing values in a record number field of a stored table, and if "record number" is a primary key whose values are used to uniquely identify a row, the system will replace received record number values with unique values for adding the data to the pre-existing stored database). These and other well known techniques may be performed by system 10, but are not necessarily described in detail herein so as not to obscure the description of the embodiments with unnecessary detail. [0020] A subscriber may transmit requests to system 10 through web-portal 12. Requests are received at block 10-7. At block 10-5, a response to the user request is generated. This generation of a response involves requesting and retrieving information from data storage block 10-3 as indicated by the arrows between blocks 10-5 and 10-3, and involves performing the processing necessary to generate a suitable data view for display. At block 10-6, the response is returned to the used through web-portal 12. Continue reading about Supplier performance reporting... Full patent description for Supplier performance reporting Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims Click on the above for other options relating to this Supplier performance reporting patent application. ###  How KEYWORD MONITOR works... a FREE service from FreshPatents1. Sign up (takes 30 seconds). 2. Fill in the keywords to be monitored. 3. Each week you receive an email with patent applications related to your keywords. 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