WO2001046832A2

WO2001046832A2 - Method and system for locating cost information

Info

Publication number: WO2001046832A2
Application number: PCT/US2000/033026
Authority: WO
Inventors: Roy Ray Odle
Original assignee: General Electric Company
Priority date: 1999-12-21
Filing date: 2000-12-06
Publication date: 2001-06-28
Also published as: AU2062501A; WO2001046832A8

Abstract

An exemplary embodiment of the invention is a method for obtaining cost information for starting materials to be used in a manufacturing process. The method includes searching a plurality of vendor web pages for web pages relevant to the starting materials. Web pages relevant to the starting materials are retrieved. Web pages are parsed to obtain web pages relevant to the starting materials and to obtain starting material cost information. A cost report is generated in response to said starting material cost information.

Description

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR LOCATING COST INFORMATION

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of U.S. provisional patent application 60/171,328 filed December 21, 1999, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates generally to locating price information, and specifically to locating pricing information that is dispersed across multiple sources. The Internet has, in recent years, become an integral part of day-to-day commerce. One particular format on the Internet that has gained predominance in recent years is the World Wide Web format (hereinafter WWW). The WWW format is often written in HyperText Markup Language (hereinafter HTML), and generally includes combined text and graphics.

The text, graphics, or other media content is presented to user's system by the user system browser visually on a monitor, auditorily through speakers, or possibly through other means. Websites are typically a conglomeration of web pages, each of which may be maintained by the same owner. For instance, a web site that involves widgets might have one web page that displayed images of the widgets, another that had textual information about the widgets' specifications, and another that showed the widgets moving. Each of these web pages would be written in HTML, and together they would constitute a website.

eCommerce is typically conducted when a buyer navigates to a website and retrieves HTML documents from that website. The website is maintained by a vendor and contains information related to products or services offered by the vendor. Generally a website will have one or more web pages that have pricing information for the product line offered by the vendor. A buyer can navigate from page to page to view the products and their associated prices. Although websites with product pricing information are replete throughout the Internet, it is difficult to quickly locate the relevant websites.

Search engines can be used to simplify the process of finding relevant websites. Commercial search engines compile indexed lists of websites according to terminology found in the documents of those websites. The terminology is usually taken from the introductory text of each webpage. The scope of the sites returned will therefore often extend well beyond vendors of the desired product. A commercial search engine, as is well known in the art, is a website that sends the user a form document when a specific web page is opened. The user then inputs the search term or terms into the form and returns the search information to the search engine website. The search engine then returns a list drawn from an index, which is a list of terms with matching websites. This list, however, is typically neither concise nor on- point, and usually requires much manual searching before vendor webpages are isolated.

Price information, therefore, is not always easily accessible, and since no universal website index exists, competitive pricing is oftentimes difficult to conduct through the Internet. The entire process, from locating to ordering, can be very time consuming and resource demanding.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIGURE l is a schematic representation of the system of one embodiment of the present invention wherein price lists are generated automatically;

FIGURE 2 is a flow chart representing the process of generating a price list of one embodiment of the present invention;

FIGURE 3 is a schematic representation of the system of one embodiment of the present invention wherein price lists are generated automatically; and,

FIGURE 4 is a flow chart representing the process of generating a price list of one embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Figure l is a schematic representation one embodiment of a system for locating pricing information. The user system 12 can be a computer that exchanges information with a server 14 and that receives information from the server 14. The user system 12 may be any means for receiving information generated by the server 14 that implements the process described herein. The user system 12 can be connected to the server 14 directly, or through a network 16.

The server 14 is a server such as any that are well known in the art. The server 14 can be a computer that executes a computer program contained in a storage medium to perform the processes described herein. As shown in Figure 1, the server 14 is connected to a network 16. This network 16 can be any set of interconnected devices, but preferably is the Internet and its related resources.

A firewall 20 can be included internally in the server 14, or externally as shown in Figure 1. The firewall 20 is designed to prevent unauthorized exchange of information from server 14 to users who access the server 14 through the network 16, or with third parties who access the system. The firewall 20 can be a software program that screens information passing into and out of server 14 connected to network 16.

The network 16 can be any network that connects computers and/or information storage devices. Network examples include, but are not limited to, the Internet, local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), ethernets, and intranets. In networks that are entirely within a single organizational entity, the need for firewall 20 security may be minimal. When the server 14 is connected to the Internet, however, server 14 integrity is more important, and outside vendor systems 22 can be restricted from accessing proprietary or sensitive information that is stored on the server 14.

The search engine 18 can be any search engine that is connected to the network 16 and that is capable of searching the contents of the network 16 for pricing information relevant to the system. The search engine 18 can be any commercially available search engine that is connected to the Internet, or a private search engine that is located within the server 14 or the user system 12. Additionally, the search engine 18 can be a private metasearch engine. In this configuration, the metasearch engine connects the server 14 with multiple commercial search engines. This configuration is desirable because the indexed information stored on the various commercial search engines is not perfectly redundant, and retrieving information from multiple search engines allows for a more comprehensive search.

The vendor system 22 can be any system that allows the user system 12 access to pricing information through the network 16. The vendor system 22 can be a server that provides the vendor's website content (i.e., web pages) to the Internet. The invention is not limited to retrieving price information from websites over the Internet. Any file format (e.g., FTP, Gopher, etc.) that is transferable over a network can serve as the underlying source of information for the system.

Figure 2 is a flow chart showing a method for retrieving pricing information in one embodiment of the present invention. This example and those that follow relate to searching for chemical supplies, but as one of ordinary skill in the art will recognize, any pricable item could be the subject of the present invention.

Flow is initiated in step 24. An individual at user system 12 can initiate this step, or it can be automatically initiated by the server 14. For example, the server 14 may execute a computer program which instructs the server 14 to periodically obtain pricing information on a particular product. If the server 14 starts automatically at defined intervals, the search terms (see step 26) will be known and stored for use by the server 14.

In step 26, the server 14 prompts the user system 12 for search terms.

This means that the user at user system 12 inputs words that correspond to the products for which pricing information is desired. This can include the name of the product, the chemical structure of the product, or an identification number or name (such as those found in Chem-Abstracts). Terms such as "price," "purchase," and "sale" can be included by the user or automatically added by the server 14 to further limit the search to websites that represent vendors.

In step 28, the search terms are forwarded to the appropriate search engine 18. If an Internet search engine is being used, then the appropriate webpage of that search engine will be opened by a browser in the server 14, and the search terms generated in step 26 will be sent to the search engine 18. If a local search engine is being used, then the network 16 does not need to be used in this step. If a local metasearch engine is being used, then the server 14 will send the search terms to several search engines that are connected to the network 16. The search results are then provided to server 14.

In step 30, the search results can optionally be parsed by server 14 more thoroughly for pertinent product information. This step is performed in order to refine the search results. Search engines will typically return a list of web pages. Oftentimes, however, the webpage will not represent a vendor's product list or price list. For example, a web page may include text such as "We have competitive prices on nitrogen." This web page, however, does not include pricing information in monetary terms such as price per pound. A parsing process may be performed by server 14 to remove web page references that do not provide pertinent information about the desired product. The server 14 accesses each web page identified in the search results (by using the uniform resource locator or link by the search engine) and locates web pages including the desired chemical name within a predetermined number of characters of a numerical entry. This indicates that the web page actual contains prices in a monetary form. Web pages lacking this feature are deleted from the search results. The references remaining after the initial parsing will represent webpages having pricing information relevant to the desired product. Web pages having pricing information may be stored on server 14 for subsequent processing.

As an alternative to locating the chemical name within a predetermined proximity of a numerical, monetary entry, web pages may use a predefined pricing format. The format may arrange the pricing information in any format (e.g., a table containing predetermined information in predefined locations). The web page may also include an identifier that indicates to the server 14 that this web page contains pricing information in the predefined format. The use of a predefined pricing format facilitates locating and extracting pricing information.

At this point, however, the retained information on server 14 represents the entire webpage, and not the product pricing information. The entire webpage may include extraneous information not relevant to pricing of the product. The stored web pages are retrieved by the server 14 and may then again be automatically parsed to isolate or identify the information that specifically recites the price of the desired item. This step is useful in limiting the information included in a report generated at step 32. Including entire webpage documents in the report would reduce the ease of interpreting the report. In step 32, the server 14 compiles the relevant pricing information parsed from the webpage information, and sends a report to the user system 12. The report can be sent through electronic means, such as an automatically generated email, or it can be stored for later retrieval, among other methods. The report can be organized to present the compiled information in any format, including a format that lists the location and price information of the product in order by preference. Flow then ends in step 34.

In this embodiment, the webpage information obtained and parsed in step 30 can be stored on the server 14 or at the user system 12. Temporarily storing this information in a local cache will save time and resources when further searches are done for the same pricing information. This prevents a website from being overlooked by the server 14 if the website is not identified by search engine 18. The stored information can be used directly, or the webpage or website from which the information was originally obtained can be accessed again to update the information for the next search.

In another embodiment of the present invention, step 26 can be entirely substituted with an automated search term algorithm or program that will produce search terms based upon an end product. That is, the user simply inputs the desired final product, and the algorithm determines the search terms based upon known techniques for producing the final product. For example, a user unfamiliar with chemical compositions can input a desired quantity of an end product such as ammonia. The server 14 may store a list of starting materials, such as nitrogen and hydrogen, that can be used to produce the end product by way of a known method. The server can store starting materials for a variety of processes and manufacturing cost information for each process. For example, process I requires starting material A and B and costs 15 cents per pound of end product. Process II requires starting material A and C and costs 12 cents per pound of end product. The server 14 can then perform multiple searches to derive starting material cost information for process I and process II. The invention is not limited to chemical manufacturing processes but may involve a variety of processes. This embodiment allows comparative pricing of different manufacturing techniques, which will not only indicate the lowest price for a single set of starting materials, but will also give the overall best price for producing the end product by any known method. In order to optimize the quality of such pricing information, the process automatically determines the quantity of starting materials required to produce the desired amount of final product as indicated by the user. In this embodiment, the report generated in step 32 can contain information relating to the preferred method of manufacture and the location and price of the starting materials required. The process can further be tailored to return information that is pertinent to the manufacturing process through the delivery of the goods.

As described above, the server 14 stores known manufacturing processes and manufacturing process cost information for deriving the final product specified by the user. As an alternative, the server 14 may locate manufacturing processes and determine overall cost information automatically. For example, from the final product the server 14 may search for various manufacturing processes to define starting materials and process conditions. From the starting materials, the server can locate starting material cost information. From the process conditions, the server 14 can locate manufacturing process cost information. The starting material cost and the manufacturing process cost can then be used by the server 14 to derive an overall cost for each manufacturing process.

Another embodiment of the present invention is shown in Figure 3. In this embodiment, a request for pricing information is sent directly to the vendor. This method may be used when there is insufficient pricing information available in web sites searched by server 14. To identify vendors, the server 14 may perform a search of websites as described above and return addresses, e-mail address, phone numbers and/or fax numbers of vendors who supply the desired product. The requests for pricing information can be made telephonically, through a fax transmission, or through regular mail. In any of these cases, the quote request can be made automatically: the telephonic communication can be made with automated voice software, the fax can be sent automatically, and the letter can be generated and mailed automatically with systems known in the art. Additionally, the request can be made by server 14 through the network 16 using email to vendor system 22.

Figure 4 shows the process by which the requested price information is automatically integrated and reported to the user system 12. The process is started as in step 38 in a manner similar to step 24 of Figure 2. In step 40, the requests for quotes are generated, and a timer is optionally started. The request for quotes can be made in any manner as described above, with automated requests preferred. Non-automated requests can be made in place of the automated requests, as long as the return of the quoted price is reported automatically. The timer is started in this step to limit the time that elapses before the system automatically stops accepting quotes for the desired product. The system now waits for quotes to be returned. In a preferred embodiment, quotes are received through email received at server 14 or through forms on a website administered by the server 14. For example, a vendor system 22 can access server 14 over network 16 and enter quote information on a form generated by server 14. Alternatively, quotes can be returned to an automatic phone system that is capable of prompting a caller to enter information via voice or the telephone number pad. In fact, any means for receiving quotes can be used, as long as the information can be incorporated into a report automatically without significant human intervention.

The request for quotes may be for starting materials only or may be a request for quotes for a desired final product. If the request for quote is for a starting material, the vendor quote information will include a price per unit of the starting material. If the request for quote specifies a desired final product, the vendor quotes will include stating material cost information, a manufacturing process description (time, temperature, etc.) and manufacturing cost information. In this way, the server can determine the most cost effective method for arriving at the final product. In step 42, the timer generates a signal that indicates that the server 14 should stop taking quotes. At this point, a pricing list is generated as before, with the associated recommendations for the technique that should be employed to generate the desired end product, and the price and location of the raw materials and supplies that should be purchased to generate the desired quantity of end product.

In step 44 the report is sent to the user system 12 and in step 46 the process terminates. This embodiment is particularly useful when sources of a product are already known, or when the Internet or network access provided by vendors is incomplete or otherwise precludes pricing through other embodiments.

As described above, the invention can be embodied in the form of computer-implemented processes and apparatuses for practicing those processes. The invention can also be embodied in the form of computer program code containing instructions embodied in tangible media, such as floppy diskettes, CD-ROMs, hard drives, or any other computer-readable storage medium, wherein, when the computer program code is loaded into and executed by a computer, the computer becomes an apparatus for practicing the invention. The invention can also be embodied in the form of computer program code, for example, whether stored in a storage medium, loaded into and/or executed by a computer, or transmitted over some transmission medium, such as over electrical wiring or cabling, through fiber optics, or via electromagnetic radiation, wherein, when the computer program code is loaded into and executed by a computer, the computer becomes an apparatus for practicing the invention. When implemented on a general- purpose microprocessor, the computer program code segments configure the microprocessor to create specific logic circuits.

While the invention has been described with reference to exemplary embodiments, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes may be made and equivalents may be substituted for elements thereof without departing from the scope of the invention. In addition, many modifications may be made to adapt a particular situation or material to the teachings of the invention without departing from the essential scope thereof. Therefore, it is intended that the invention not be limited to the particular embodiments disclosed for carrying out this invention, but that the invention will include all embodiments falling within the scope of the appended claims.

Claims

WHAT IS CLAIMED IS:

1. A method for obtaining cost information for starting materials to be used in a manufacturing process, the method comprising:

searching a plurality of vendor web pages for web pages relevant to the starting materials;

retrieving said web pages relevant to the starting materials;

parsing said web pages relevant to the starting materials to obtain starting material cost information; and,

generating a cost report in response to said starting material cost information.

2. The method of claim l further comprising:

specifying a desired final product; and

determining the starting materials in response to the final product.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising:

determining a plurality of manufacturing processes for deriving said final product; and

determining the starting materials required for each of said manufacturing processes.

4. The method of claim 3 further comprising:

determining manufacturing process cost information for each of said manufacturing processes;

determining an overall cost for each manufacturing process in response to the manufacturing process cost information and the starting material cost information.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein:

said parsing includes retaining web pages that include starting material cost information in monetary terms and deleting web pages lacking starting material cost information in monetary terms.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein:

said starting material cost information is contained in one of said web pages in a predefined format.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein:

said one of said web pages includes an identifier indicating that the starting material cost information is in said predefined format.

8. A system for obtaining cost information for starting materials to be used in a manufacturing process, the system comprising:

a user system for generating a request for cost information for starting materials;

a server coupled to the user system, the server receiving the request;

a plurality of vendor systems coupled to said server by a network, said server searching web pages implemented by said vendor systems for web pages relevant to the starting materials;

said server retrieving said web pages relevant to the starting materials;

said server parsing said web pages relevant to the starting materials to obtain starting material cost information; and,

said server providing a cost report to said user system in response to said starting material cost information.

9. The system of claim 8 wherein:

said user system specifies a desired final product; and

said server determines the starting materials in response to the final product.

10. The system of claim 9 wherein:

said server determines a plurality of manufacturing processes for deriving said final product; and

said server determines the starting materials required for each of said manufacturing processes.

11. The system of claim 10 wherein: said server determines manufacturing process cost information for each of said manufacturing processes; and,

said server determines an overall cost for each manufacturing process in response to the manufacturing process cost information and the starting material cost information.

12. The system of claim 8 wherein:

13. The system of claim 8 wherein:

14. The system of claim 13 wherein:

15. A storage medium encoded with machine-readable computer program code for obtaining cost information for starting materials to be used in a manufacturing process in a system including a server coupled to a plurality of vendor systems by a network, the storage medium including instructions for causing the server to implement a method comprising:

searching a plurality of vendor web pages implemented by the vendor systems for web pages relevant to the starting materials;

retrieving said web pages relevant to the starting materials;

16. The storage medium of claim 15 further comprising instructions for causing the server to implement:

receiving a desired final product; and

determining the starting materials in response to the final product.

17. The storage medium of claim 16 further comprising instructions for causing the server to implement:

18. The storage medium of claim 17 further comprising instructions for causing the server to implement:

19. The storage medium of claim 15 wherein:

20. The storage medium of claim 15 wherein:

21. The storage medium of claim 20 wherein: