Discovery Network’s supply chain solution
Discovery’s Three Layer Supply chain Solution
Discovery is offering a revolutionary solution that enables brands to track their products through their supply chains accurately and on real-time basis. Tracking products throughout the supply chain is essentially a challenge specifically for massively produced consumer goods, such as those in the FMCG or retail industry. Discovery’s solution is an IoT-led supply chain solution that runs through a network of decentralized nodes, residing in the smartphones of users. Discovery blends three layers into a one-stop solution and makes IoT an affordable solution for daily products. The three layers are:
- Hardware layer (Cliot)
- Distributed data harvesting layer (user community) and
- Data Analytics/Artificial Intelligence layer.
CLIOT- the IoT tag
The Cliot is a self charging printable tag and works on the principle of backscatter technology. It is a low cost IoT tag and is developed at the cost of US $0.10. It is highly affordable that it can be placed on every single product.Enterprises or buyers are the agents who would be interested in tracking their products.
The Cliot tag can be used for various purposes, such as those enlisted below.
- Gaining certain useful information by placing the tag on daily use products like toothpaste, cereal boxes, perishable goods, shampoos etc. The tag-
> notifies us before a week of the expiry date of a product
> notifies before it’s almost empty
- Obtaining valuable inputs about a fashion apparel in a mall or shop by placing the tag on items. The tags gives the following information-
> Is the product not being sold for a long period of time, and hence needs to be shifted from one section to another?
> Is the product soon going to be out of stock?
- Placing the tag on fragile boxes addresses these concerns-
> Was the box slipped while importing?
> Is the product inside damaged?
- The tag can be used by suppliers who import goods for the following purposes:
> To check the temperature in which the product has been placed
> Gaining information through certain sensors like proximity sensors, accelerometer sensors, pressure sensors, motion sensors, light sensors etc.
The Cliot tag can be affixed to the product that needs to be tracked. The data collected by this tag is de-granualized and hence sharing with any other participant is restricted, ensuring maximum privacy and security. As this data is sent, it aids the brands by giving them real-time visibility that enables brands to make business decisions on a real-time basis. Enterprises can be provided with their own set of tags, based on a predefined protocol built on the lines of EAN. The device is self-charging, gaining power from electromagnetic waves like cellular or WiFi waves.
USER COMMUNITY
The user community are the groups of people who would have the Discovery application installed on their smartphones. These smartphones would serve as the nodes of the blockchain network. The user community shall be paid for lending the cellular network to Discovery network. The data will be used by the community members who act as the data collection nodes. DiscoveryIoT works on the principle of distributed data harvesting i.e it uses the cellular data network of the user community to power the data transfer from the Cliot to the central servers. When a community member reaches within the proximity of the Cliot say within 30 metres, the Cliot and the smartphone automatically enter into a smart contract and the presence of the Cliot is recorded on the blockchain. The community member would be rendering all these services at exceptionally low costs as compared to any other available solution. It helps the users in getting secured, reliable and accurate data. Also, to participate in Discovery IoT network, no active work is required by the users. The Discovery platform will be reachable through the mobile application interface and the users can join the network at any time. Users must provide information about the data limit for each day and once the limit is reached, the connection would be deactivated for that particular day. Since the pay-out to the user would be on a per-MB basis, and since such per-MB payout would be higher than the amount charged by the telecommunications network, it will motivate users to lend more of their network bandwidth and data limit to our Discovery community. The reward is paid instantly ignoring any latency.
DATA ANALYTICS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
There are four stages which Discovery runs, before letting AI optimize any operations. They are as follows:
- Connecting devices
- Understanding data
- Training AI
- Making it actionable
The last stage consists of a process that includes collecting data from the Cliot tag and then converting this raw data into a meaningful one. The AI/Data Analytics Layer can make data actionable by issuing commands in real-time to change state, performance, and behaviour.. The DiscoveryIoT solution incorporates AI in order to provide predictive and actionable information for brands. Moreover, the AI engine gets smarter as more information is fed into the DiscoveryIoT database.
Conclusion
With a threefold solution in place, Discovery’s IoT network has the capability to completely disrupt the traditional supply chain market. The Cliot tag being developed to be low-cost, has the appeal to be massively adopted by small or large enterprises alike. Additionally, involving common smartphone users as a bedrock to grow the network, with attractive incentives, Discovery can expand its network faster than any IoT based solution provider. This rapid expansion along with the analytics that Discovery will provide will ultimately be able to woo enterprises looking for smart supply chain solution.