Patent ID: 8170900

Claim:
A supply chain management network comprising a plurality of discovery servers for tracking a tangible object, identifiable by an object identifier, in a multi-supply chain network, each of the discovery servers being configured to serve a corresponding supply chain in the multi-supply chain network and comprising: a communication interface configured: to communicate with each of a plurality of partners in the supply chain using a predefined protocol; and to communicate with another one of the plurality of discovery servers in order to retrieve information therefrom via a partner common to both the discovery server and the other one of the plurality of discovery servers; a data store configured to store events for the object, the events being received from the plurality of partners, wherein each stored event comprises the object identifier, a life cycle step identifying a stage at which the event was generated, a partner identifier identifying which of the plurality of partners is generating the event and a first time stamp; and a processor configured to search the data store in response to an inquiry regarding the object from a requesting one of the partners and provide corresponding events to the requesting one of the partners as a result of the search.