Intro/Outro (00:03):
Welcome to Supply Chain Now, the voice of global supply chain. Supply Chain Now focuses on the best in the business for our worldwide audience, the people, the technologies, the best practices, and today’s critical issues, the challenges, and opportunities. Stay tuned to hear from those making global business happen right here on Supply Chain Now.
Kevin L. Jackson (00:32):
Hello, everyone. This is Kevin L. Jackson presenting Digital Transformers. And I’m serving as your host today, but I’m coming to you from Galveston, Texas. Did you know that the port of Galveston is Texas’s number one cruise port? And it ranks as the fourth most busiest port in north America. And it’s one of the top 20 destinations in the world. The port emphasizes vehicle and other roll-on roll-off cargo ships, refrigerated shipments with energy and project cargo and cruise ships.
Kevin L. Jackson (01:11):
But, today, we are spending time with Mark Judson, the CEO of EIM Sensors. An award winning small business that specializes in enterprise information management. The company operates across the public sector, and customers include the United States Department of Homeland Security. One of the things we’re going to talk about is how their asset management solutions have evolved over the last decade into the Internet of Things and management, where their technology is being used to monitor and control items of every shape and size.
Kevin L. Jackson (01:52):
But, first ,I’d like to thank our sponsor, Digital Names by Total Network Services. A quick programming note, if you enjoy today’s conversation, be sure to find us when you get your podcast, subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.
Kevin L. Jackson (02:11):
So, without any ado, let’s welcome Mark. How are you doing, Mark?
Mark Judson (02:16):
Pretty well. Thanks for having me.
Kevin L. Jackson (02:18):
Well, please introduce yourself and EIM Sensor. What do you do?
Mark Judson (02:25):
Sure. I’m Mark Judson, I’m CEO of EIM Sensor. And, you know, we’re a small boutique company. We specialize in information management. This is one of those things where, you know, we [inaudible] from records management, documents, collection management, supply chain management. And, you know, it’s really important to be able to have an awareness of where any organization’s strategic assets are and IT governance and information management are. It’s a huge part of that. That’s where we help large businesses to be able to do.
Kevin L. Jackson (03:01):
I tell you one of the things that organizations are finding more and more is that, data is really a strategic asset, you have to manage it as such. How are your customers doing that with your solutions?
Mark Judson (03:16):
I think that we’re part of a big problem that’s faced. Over the past ten years, there’s been a huge transformation of going from physical assets, files within file cabinets, to the cloud and being able to digitize records that need to be preserved. And every organization has their own retention strategies, you know, often within government agencies, whether it’s an email, a document, if it contains any kind of personal or private identifiable information, they’d like to be able to preserve it three years, seven years, ten years, sometimes even beyond that. And what we actually do is come up with a strategy where you could either digitally [inaudible] an asset or to scan it, digitalize it, and have a way to retrieve the asset from wherever it’s being archived.
Kevin L. Jackson (04:20):
Well, I know you didn’t become the CEO of EIM Sensor over night. Your career sort of took some turns on it two way. I understand you even worked with some satellites.
Mark Judson (04:36):
Yeah. You know, it’s really interesting that my role with satellites really isn’t that far of a departure from information management. I was initially involved with satellite imagery where we could actually task a satellite to image the globe and, in fact, orbit the earth every 90 minutes, very large SWAT coverage areas. Imagery could actually help to characterize crops within a specific region, really understand the city growth population density, measure the impact of storms that have actually come into a community for insurance purposes. But one of the really important things about, you know, imagery that comes off of the satellite is being able to have appropriate metadata that would actually show when the image was actually collected, what the area of interest was, what was the time of day. Other meaningful elements that could be used for comparative analysis, where you try to understand the changes that have occurred within an area of interest or the impact that, perhaps, a storm or something like that may have triggered to a local community.
Kevin L. Jackson (06:00):
Yeah. Earlier, we talked about the fact that you actually did a project with NASA that involved buoys off the coast. And so, you have actually worked in this area for quite a long. And some people say that, you know, why do we waste money doing things in space when we have more important things here on earth. But over the past couple of years, one of those really important things here on earth has been COVID and the global battle against that. And I understand you have actually worked with the DHS in tracking COVID vaccines.
Mark Judson (06:37):
Yeah. We’ve actually worked with a number of different agencies with pandemic efforts. And, of course, this did kind of stem from work that we did with NASA. You know, a lot of NASA research is earth science focused. And, you know, being able to combine [inaudible] sensors with NASA imagery and different regression analysis models can all be combined to really provide predictive models of impacts of something like COVID to a community and to come up with strategic mitigation approaches that would be effective and then measure, you know, those activities over time.
Kevin L. Jackson (07:22):
Wow. It’s such a broad area. People just think about enterprise information management, all of these other things really seem outside of the scope, but it’s a very broad scope of what you do. Now, also, one of your major partners is Iron Mountain. So, that sounds ominous. What is Iron Mountain?
Mark Judson (07:47):
Well, you know, Iron Mountain is an amazing company. They’ve got mines -I believe they were granite mines out in Pennsylvania – that they’ve developed rooms the size of football fields. And inside of those, they have collections of all types. They’ve got initial Hollywood movie productions dating back from when movies really got started, they’ve got legacy collection information from jewelry, you know, just about anything that you could imagine that you’d want to preserve over time is safely safeguarded in there. And this is something that’s used, not just by government agencies that we’ve worked with, but also with commercial companies that are maintaining land records, insurance policies. And then, all kinds of artifacts, collections that may be in museums, for instance, that actually needs to be maintained at a unique environmental condition. And, you know, this is something that can be continuously tracked and monitored, you know, within a secure facility.
Kevin L. Jackson (09:06):
So, I guess when you talked about tracking items, it’s more than where they are. You’re really looking at the environment around those items. And earlier you mentioned metadata, so I guess that’s part of the metadata associated with the actual data. You know, our audience, just being Supply Chain Now, of course, they’re very interested in supply chain. So, this is really the heart of your business in that way.
Mark Judson (09:41):
Yeah. Absolutely. And when people think about supply chain management, track and trace, I think that it’s really easy to think about how FedEx or UPS delivers packages with barcode scans at each point along the way from the time you ship a package to the time that arrives at your home. And when you are shipping products, goods, and services, this is really where it all begins. When you go beyond just the regular package, you could look at things like pharmaceutical shipments where you have to maintain a certain temperature. You need a little bit more than just a barcode. You need to be able to understand certain thresholds or tolerances of different changes in temperature, for instance, and be able to capture excursion events where there isn’t deviation from the planned supply route.
Mark Judson (10:45):
And, you know, this is important not just for protecting the product and the environmental monitoring. It also helps to prevent counterfeiting and to facilitate any type of returns that actually come out of it. But one thing where we’re looking to really go beyond where the traditional supply chain is, typically, you’re tracking ends at the point of delivery. So, once a product gets dropped off at your house or a pharmaceutical product arrives at your local pharmacy, the data that actually comes back to the manufacturer is pretty much limited beyond that. So, we’ve actually been working on developing mobile applications that would allow end users to really report back as far as their satisfaction using a product and be able to track the effectiveness of what they’ve actually been doing, whether you’re talking about a COVID vaccination, another pharmaceutical product, or even some kind of a digital media experience.
Kevin L. Jackson (11:54):
So, now, you’re talking about, like, the digital supply chain. So, you’re extending that physical supply chain with information and additional data.
Mark Judson (12:06):
Yeah. I think that’s really what’s next for the supply chain management as we’ve always thought about tracking physical products. But, now, being able to track the pedigree of electronic files and to be able to report back on that. A simple example might be if somebody sends an email and there’s a way to track each person that the information has been forwarded out to so that you can have an idea. So, a lot of grassroots campaigns start with an email out to ten people and [inaudible] that way you’ve got a whole community that’s actively engaged in a campaign. And having digital tokens that actually can track, you know, the way that electronic information is being shared is extremely important in capturing sentiment analysis and really understanding the value of information that’s being distributed.
Kevin L. Jackson (13:09):
Wow. People keep saying that data is the new Oracle, and I guess you’re mining that all through EIM. So, you’re talking about stuff you’re doing now, I’m almost afraid to ask, what’s the future of track and trace?
Mark Judson (13:25):
Well, I hope that, you know, it’s going to really change the way that people work and do things. When you start to look at factory automation within the pharmaceutical space, especially, there’s a lot of quality control measures, a lot of standard operating procedures. And, oftentimes, there’s a dependency on having certain control points within factory operations where there’s human inspection, validation, quality testing. But, now, with the Internet of Things, we’re going to be able to combine that with AI to be able to continuously monitor the quality of the products and the distribution. And to automatically raise a flag, you know, if there are any deviations to what was actually planned for. It’s extremely incredible to think about.
Kevin L. Jackson (14:28):
So, are you an Internet of Things company?
Mark Judson (14:32):
Well, I think that we describe ourselves as an information management organization, and the Internet of Things is definitely a part of that. I think that as we kind of look into the future, you know, Internet of Things could be a toaster, a light bulb, and appliance, but it could also be a digital file. And, you know, we’re starting to look at things like artwork that we can actually use digital tokens to actually track and certify authenticity and to help to really change the way that art work is actually managed. You know, if you look at a lot of online sites and programs that work with digital media, like Netflix, just as an example, there are a lot of shared accounts. And one of the areas where companies that work with streaming media are really struggling is with licensing and shared [inaudible]. And, you know, I think that what’s really next is really being able to ensure that people that are accessing digital content actually have license to use the information that they’re looking at.
Kevin L. Jackson (15:53):
Wow. I mean, I’m going to have to take that bait because I know you are going to be working with TNS in a pilot with the Telecommunications Industry Association on just that, trying to prevent counterfeit devices and illegal use of information, data, and entertainment across the internet. And you also mentioned artwork, and I guess we should talk about why are we here in Galveston, in the 1861 Custom House. We talked about it earlier, I’m not sure that’s the right year. So, why are you here? What does a museum have to do with track and trace?
Mark Judson (16:42):
I think that one of the important things is Galveston is a town of a huge historic significance. And, you know, they’ve just had a huge venue celebrating June 19th, there’s a lot of history, a lot of preservation. And we’re actually working with the community to bring in a digital gallery for display at next year’s festival. And, you know, we’re looking for a way to be able to share those art pieces and to really give credit to the artist and other people that are actually involved in making the collection possible.
Kevin L. Jackson (17:25):
Wow. I mean, I’m really looking forward to working with you and your team at EIM Sensor and being able to leverage your advanced technology to track this digital art. So, before we go, though, how could my audience reach out and learn more about you or contact you directly?
Mark Judson (17:48):
Yeah. Thanks for asking. We’re actually putting up a new website that will be used to promote the June 19th gallery, it’s june19store.com. And you can go there and learn more about our digital collection. And, you know, as we start to plan out events for next Juneteenth, I hope to see everybody there.
Kevin L. Jackson (18:10):
Wow. Yeah. Absolutely. Now, on June 19th – man, a national holiday – you guys are going to be in the spotlight so to speak.
Mark Judson (18:17):
Well, you know, I really look forward to bringing awareness to the holiday and really making the day a great event.
Kevin L. Jackson (18:26):
Great. Well, thank you very much for joining us. And on that note, I’d like to ask the audience to check out the wide variety of industry thought leadership at supplychainnow.com. And you can find us wherever you subscribe to your podcast. So, on behalf of the entire team here at Supply Chain Now, this is Kevin Jackson, wishing all of you listeners a bright and transformational future. We’ll see you next time on digital transformers. Thanks.
Intro/Outro (19:00):
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