RockBlocks: Streamlining Supply Chains Via the Web

rockblocksRockBlocks wants to take your retail business online. They don’t mean selling your goods online; they mean managing your entire supply chain through a web app. The idea is that if you can aggregate all the information about all the costs of your products “from design to delivery,” you can start to increase efficiencies, cut transportation, save energy and, by extension, money.

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“We’re trying to bring a framework to our customers that lets them think about their supply chain in more socially responsible ways,” RockBlocks CEO David Diamond told us. And there’s a growing market for that — Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, is aggressively trying to make its supply chains more efficient.

Officially spun out of Tourtellotte Solutions in December of 2007, Wayland, Mass.-based RockBlocks already has a large list of well-known retail clients, including JCPenney, Target, Home Depot and Macy’s. RockBlocks’ recent launch also included a cash infusion of $5 million from Brook Venture Partners, but Diamond said the company is still looking for more capital to create a sales and marketing force and further product development.

RockBlocks’ software breaks down the global supply chain into five segments: raw materials, production, production byproducts, packaging and delivery. Each stage is given a relative score from 1-5 based on how efficient it is. As the database grows, customers can start to use previous experience to make better decisions for new products. Comparing this sort of data is currently difficult since almost all of it is still done on paper, according to Diamond. “If you look at the paper footprint of each product of these retailers, the amount of paper is absolutely mind-boggling.”

Eventually, Diamond hopes the RockBlocks software will be able to tell customers how and where they can save money and energy by “anticipating waste.” The idea is if you’ve designed, sourced and shipped a product using RockBlocks, the software should be able to tell you how much waste is produced at each step and suggest more efficient alternatives.

While few of RockBlocks’ current clients use it to measure and manage their carbon footprints, providing the tools to do so is the first step. As consumers demand to know more about where and how products are made, retailers will be forced to be more accountable.

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