AT THE CENTER
The electronic newsletter of the
Silicon Valley World Internet Center
Wednesday August 6, 2003
The Silicon
Valley World Internet Center thanks its Sponsors for their continuing
support:
EXECUTIVE
SPONSORS
Amdocs, Inc. Cable & Wireless
Deutsche Telekom Fujitsu IBM Corporation
SAP Sun Microsystems
KNOWLEDGE
NETWORK PARTNERS
Halleck IC Growth, Inc.
Internet Wire
Past copies
of newsletters and directions to the Center are available on the
Web site.
All programs
are held at the Center unless otherwise noted.
To join our
community, click on this link: http://center.infopoint.com/join.php
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SUMMARY: SMART ITEMS BUSINESS
FORUM (SIBF) WORKING GROUP: TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2003
"BUSINESS APPLICATIONS OF DISTRIBUTED SENSORS AND SENSOR NETWORKS"
Summary and Presentation Link below.
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SPECIAL FUND-RAISER PUB
FOR THE LEUKEMIA & LYMPHOMA SOCIETY: THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2003
"SMARTCARDS IN HEALTHCARE: IMPROVING QUALITY OF PATIENT CARE AND
MEDICAL RESEARCH"
By Mr. Dmitriy M. Kruglyak, Principal, Aquave Group, LLC
5:00 - 7:00 p.m. Open to the Public. The Pub Talk begins at 6:00
p.m.
Note: This Pub is a Fund-Raiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
See below for more information.
*********
SUMMARY: AUTO I.D.
SALON: MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2003
"ADOPTION AND APPLICABILITY OF RFID IN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT"
Summary and Presentation Link below.
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SUMMARY: SIBF WORKING
GROUP: TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2003
"BUSINESS APPLICATIONS OF DISTRIBUTED SENSORS AND SENSOR NETWORKS"
Summary and Presentation Link below.
On Tuesday, July 22, the Silicon Valley World Internet Center
convened the Smart Items Business Forum Working Group centered around
"Business Applications of Distributed Sensors and Sensor Networks".
This invitation-only program brought together established participants
in the Smart Items space to discuss key enterprise-level business
applications for Sensor Net Technology. Dr. Richard Swan, Technical
Director, Auto-ID at SAP Corporate Research Center, provided the
introductory presentation.
The summary for the Smart Items Business Forum's July 22, 2003
Working Group on Business Applications for Distributed Sensors and
Sensor Networks is available to you on the World Internet Center's
site. To download a copy of the summary, visit the Center's Website
and Scroll down and click onto "July 22, 2003 Summary (PDF Format)".
To view Richard Swan's presentation, visit the Center's Website:
Scroll down and click onto "July 22, 2003" to view the program information
and presentation link.
If you are interested in a corporate membership in the Smart Items
Business Forum to support future sessions in this space, please
contact Dr. Susan Duggan, CEO, at duggan@worldinternetcenter.com.
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SPECIAL FUND-RAISER
PUB FOR THE LEUKEMIA & LYMPHOMA SOCIETY: THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2003
"SMARTCARDS IN HEALTHCARE: IMPROVING QUALITY OF PATIENT CARE AND
MEDICAL RESEARCH"
By Mr. Dmitriy M. Kruglyak, Principal, Aquave Group, LLC
5:00 - 7:00 p.m. Open to the Public. The Pub Talk begins at 6:00
p.m.
Note: This Pub is a Fund-Raiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
See below for more information.
Information technology has a great potential to aid patient care
and assist medical research, for a variety of diseases, including
leukemia and lymphoma. Smart cards are one of the emerging technologies
that helps advance the modern medical care. A combination of patient
identification with portable and secure data storage provides up-to-date
medical records anywhere at the point of care, helping empower physicians,
reduce medical errors, as well as track medical information, procedures,
prescriptions and treatment plans. At this Pub Talk, Mr. Kruglyak
will discuss the use of smart cards in healthcare, touching upon
the related benefits, such as increasing medical efficiency and
productivity, as well as HIPAA compliance.
ABOUT AQUAVE GROUP, LLC
Aquave Group, LLC (http://www.aquave.com/)
is a provider of business and technology solutions that enable customers
to realize the benefits of SmartCard applications. Even though smart
cards have been around for over 30 years, anyone who tried a real
implementation understands the perils of custom projects that have
been unavoidable up until now. Aquave flagship product, Aquave V3
System has been developed to do away with custom projects and move
towards real enterprise application software.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
For more information, contact:
Mr. Dmitriy M. Kruglyak
Principal
Aquave Group, LLC
T: 650.678.1480
E: dkruglyak@aquave.com
FUND-RAISER PUB FOR THE LEUKEMIA & LYMPHOMA
SOCIETY
Please join us for a special Pub on August 7th focused on Internet-related
technologies and the advancement of cancer research and treatment.
The Silicon Valley World Internet Center is hosting this special
Pub as a fundraising event to support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
and its mission to find a cure for blood-related cancers (http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org).
Dr. Venilde Jeronimo, the Center's former Senior Director of Client
Services, is a 2003 summer participant with the Society's Team in
Training (TNT) (http://www.teamintraining.org),
the world's largest endurance sports training program. TNT participants
raise money toward cures for leukemia, the leading disease killer
of children; Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the largest group
of blood cancers; and myeloma, a nearly incurable cancer that strikes
mostly the elderly. Venilde has committed to train to run the Maui
Marathon on September 21 and raise $5,000. Venilde is a survivor
of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL), initially diagnosed in 1984
with a relapse in 1988 and a surgery in 1995. Of the 19 years she
has dealt with ALL, she's proud to say that she's been in remission
for 8 years and 5 months!
The Center feels strongly that the technology community can play
a vital role in supporting advanced research. This Pub is dedicated
to that spirit.
All donations are 100% tax deductible and go directly to the Leukemia
& Lymphoma Society. Checks (made out to the Society), cash, and
credit cards will be accepted day of event. For more information
on the Society and blood-related cancers; TNT; to read about Venilde's
journey with Leukemia; or to make an online donation, please go
to: http://www.teamintraining.org/participant/jeronimo-89405
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SUMMARY: AUTO I.D.
SALON: MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2003
"ADOPTION AND APPLICABILITY OF RFID IN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT"
Summary and Presentation Link below.
On June 30, 2003, the Silicon Valley World Internet Center hosted
its second Auto ID Salon, focused on "ADOPTION AND APPLICABILITY
OF RFID IN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT." The Center welcomed back Mr.
Dean Frew, President of Xterprise Corporation, as the Salon Master.
Forty Salon participants discussed key challenges to the next generation
of RFID products and the reliability of proposed solutions.
The Salon participants generated a list of what problems challenge
current RFID technology capacity and then discussed key elements
for the construction of next generation RFID-based solutions. Below
is the Salon's list of top supply chain-based challenges that RFID
solutions should address:
- applications/solution targets
- visibility
- returns/maintenance
- shrinkage (theft, lost, broken, perishable / age of product)
- tracking patients and drugs
- terrorism (knowing what NOT to move)
- process of pulling orders together
- out-of-stock avoidance
- grey market/counterfeit
- dynamic traceability
The discussion flowed from these challenges to performance issues
for current and next generation RFID solutions in the supply chain.
Salon Master Dean Frew underlined four key performance points that
need to be met to address these challenges:
- Price point
- Read rate
- Read range (does it read it or does it not?)
- Integration into backend systems
Several participants raised the issue of reliability. Mr. Frew
countered, "If your read rate and read range is good enough, the
product of those two things is read reliability." He expressed a
need for supporting read rate reliability through the use of redundant
antennae or special orientation of pallets to the readers. Many
questioned the applicability of RFID tags on all product types,
and several participants, including Mr. Frew, underlined that RFID
was not a universal solution for all supply chain management problems,
but certainly could significantly reduce labor costs and loss of
inventory.
Salon participants discussed the potential problem of data overkill:
that is, the generation of so much data by RFID tags which could
swamp a current ERP or other enterprise-level system. Mr. Frew focused
the Salon on the need for "scrubbing" data to ensure that what is
sent on for computation within an enterprise system is lean and
appropriate. As he emphasized, "The trick is being able to scrub
the data and minimize the flow of information to the enterprise
system. That's critical."
Other key points of discussion revolved around data accuracy. The
need for assuring what is read, checked, and fed into an enterprise
system from a warehouse floor is critical. The expectations for
an RFID-based system are high and many made comparisons to current
bar-code reading-systems, asking for the compelling argument for
the investment in a new RFID-based inventory system. The Salon Master
pointed out that most organizations have a 20% error rate in their
inventory control in their warehouses. "That's why you take the
human out of the loop," argued Mr. Frew, so as to get the human
error rate out of the process. A Salon Participant countered with
"So what did I save in the process?" Mr. Frew again pointed out,
"No human in the loop. We manage it by the exceptions." For example,
if a pallet arrives with 50 items and the RFID tags are scanned
and there are not 50 items in the pallet, then it could be hand
scanned. Ultimately one is only managing the exceptions and lowering
the bulk costs of tracking inventory by the use of RFID-based technologies.
The software for doing this could be in the middleware or in the
backend.
The Salon wrapped up with a discussion about security of the RFID
tags. One participant pointed out that the soft spot in the supply
chain is in the "hostile retail environment" where much of the shrinkage
of the inventory occurs. If robbers are willing to steal inventory,
what will prevent them from tampering with the RFID tags? Dean Frew
addressed this issue by saying, "You can come up with the absolute,
most impenetrable, secure tag on the planet, and it would never
be cost-effective in the environment. You can also come up with
a really inexpensive tag where you hit it with a cell phone buzz
and you could change it, and that would be a drag, as it'll be changing
all the time. So, I think there is a space there for different applications
where security is going to be critical and where security is NOT
going to be critical. We are going to find that the folks that are
building the tags and building that technology are going to make
sure that they fill that gap to match that market need when that
takes place . . . [re: security of the tags] I think it's important
in some cases; I don't want to minimize it for some; but I don't
think it's as big of an issue across the bulk of the supply chain
. . ."
Many thanks to the Salon Master and the Salon participants for
an exciting exchange. We look forward to further Auto ID Salons
in the Fall.
To view Dean Frew's presentation on RFID in the Supply Chain, visit
the Center's
Website. Scroll down and click onto "June 30, 2003" to view
the program information and presentation link.
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For further information on the Center's Sponsors and Knowledge
Network Partners, visit their Websites:
EXECUTIVE
SPONSORS
Amdocs, Inc. http://www.amdocs.com
Cable & Wireless http://www.cw.com
Deutsche Telekom http://www.dtag.de/english/index.htm
Fujitsu http://www.fujitsu.com
IBM Corporation http://www.ibm.com
SAP http://www.mysap.com
Sun Microsystems http://www.sun.com
KNOWLEDGE
NETWORK PARTNERS
Halleck http://www.halleck.com
IC Growth, Inc. http://www.icgrowth.com
Internet Wire http://www.internetwire.com
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To join our
community, click on this link: http://center.infopoint.com/join.php
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