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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.

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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.

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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:

  1. Price point
  2. Read rate
  3. Read range (does it read it or does it not?)
  4. 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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