Technology & Patent Portfolio

The architecture behind execution control.

Patent pending in the United States: twelve U.S. non-provisional applications cover the execution architecture, plus one provisional application explores a broader verification direction. The work is grounded in more than two years of production use at Anu Sushi.

The Protected Mechanisms → Talk to the Team
12+1
U.S. Applications
2+ yrs
Production Validated
1M+
Units Captured / Year
4
Filing Waves
Four Patent-Pending Mechanisms

What the patent portfolio
actually covers.

Shrink Manager's architecture rests on four mechanisms the filings describe. Three concern how the compliance record is created. The fourth turns that same capture into a production decision. Each is a specific operational pattern rather than a generic feature claim.

01 / GATING
Workflow-gated task completion
Compliance steps execute in a defined sequence, enforced by the system rather than by training. The intent is that the record cannot run ahead of the work it describes.
Floor-level enforcement
02 / TEMPORAL
Temporal authenticity enforcement
Records are designed to reflect what happened when — binding the creation of a compliance record to the moment of the work rather than to a later write-up.
Time bound to the work
03 / DUAL-SOURCE
Dual-source corroborative verification
Human attestation paired with independent machine-generated evidence, so a record does not rest on a single unverifiable input.
Independent corroboration
04 / CLOSED-LOOP
Closed-loop capture and adjust
Shrink is captured as a unit-level event at the point of work, tied back to the production order and lot that produced it, and carried into the next production and purchasing cycle. The loop closes without anyone re-entering anything.
Captured where the work happens
Where This Leads

Most systems are told
what already happened.

That distinction is the whole reason the architecture is built the way it is — and the reason the filings are worth more than the feature list they sit under.

The conventional pattern
Work happens on the floor. Later, someone tells the software about it — a form at end of shift, a spreadsheet on Monday, a binder assembled before an audit. The data is a description of the work, written by someone remembering it.
The execution-layer pattern
Data creation is embedded in the work itself. The record is a condition of proceeding, not a report written afterward — so the data arrives as a structured account of what was done, at the moment it was done.
Once physical operations become machine-readable, they become machine-intelligible.

Automation and machine intelligence are only ever as reliable as the operational data underneath them. A model reasoning over records that were reconstructed from memory is reasoning over someone's recollection. That is why the architecture matters more than any individual feature in it, and why the portfolio protects pieces of one architecture rather than twelve unrelated inventions.

Today What Shrink Manager does now
Comply. Lot-level receiving, transformation and shipping captured at the point of work.
See. Produced, sold and shrink visible the same day rather than at month-end.
Understand. The produced-vs-sold gap broken out by site, product, shift and SKU.
Decide. The gap feeds the next production order.
The end state is management by exception rather than by inspection. Not more dashboards for someone to read, but an operation where the ordinary case handles itself and a person's attention goes to the case that doesn't.
From Execution to Evidence

The work creates the record.
Then ask what the evidence can establish.

Shrink Manager® is where the architecture operates today: guiding physical work and creating structured records at the point of work, linked to the order and lot. That architecture has led us to explore a broader question: can those records help establish what actually happened when a person, another system or an AI asks? We think of that longer-term direction as making the physical world queryable.

Execution layer · Shrink Manager®
Capture the work as it happens. Keep receiving, transformation, compliance, labeling and delivery tied to the operational event that produced the record.
Evidence layer · Shrink Verify™
Explore what the available evidence could establish across a product’s history, without rewriting the underlying record.
Traceability tells you what the records say. Verification asks what they can prove. Shrink Verify™ is in development and is not currently a product offering. Explore Shrink Verify™ →
The Patent Estate

Twelve non-provisional applications.
One provisional points toward verification.

The portfolio was assembled deliberately, and it protects pieces of a single architecture rather than a collection of separate inventions. The twelve non-provisional applications build from workflow-gated execution through operational capture and closed-loop adjustment. A separate provisional application extends the architecture toward verifying what happened across a product’s history.

Wave 1 · Foundational execution-control claims
4 applications · Wave 1
The foundational filings establish the workflow-gated execution pattern itself: that compliance-relevant steps execute in a verifiable sequence, that records are generated as a byproduct of the work, and that the architecture coexists with ERP rather than replacing it.
Wave 2 · Expansion across adjacent workflows
5 applications · Wave 2
The expansion filings extend the foundational claims into the workflow surfaces where regulated production actually breaks down — lot transformation, label generation, multi-site operations, and the interface between operator attestation and downstream traceability.
Wave 3 · Production-anchored execution claims
2 applications · Wave 3
The third wave anchors execution control to the highest-frequency operational events on a regulated production floor: the shift boundary and the customer order itself. These filings cover the intersection between scheduling, authority, and workflow scoping — the operational layer adjacent systems cannot reach.
Wave 4 · Closed-loop capture and adjust
1 application · Wave 4
The fourth wave closes the loop. Shrink is captured as a unit-level event at the point of work, reconciled against the originating production order and lot, and carried into the next production and purchasing cycle — the keystone filing that connects the execution layer to the decision it informs.
On the filings themselves. Shrink Manager is patent pending in the United States. Shrink Software does not publish current application numbers, specifications, or claim language on this page. Diligence-stage investors, acquirers, and channel partners can review the filing record under NDA.
What The Filings Are

Not features. Mechanisms.

Most software in the FSMA 204 market competes on feature lists. This portfolio is structured differently. Each filing covers a specific operational mechanism — a way the production floor actually has to behave — rather than a generic capability.

That is a deliberate choice about what the company is building toward. The twelve non-provisional applications are pending before the USPTO; no patent rights are granted unless and until patents issue. The filings stake out mechanisms the architecture already occupies in production while examination proceeds.

A
Operationally grounded
Every filing attaches to a workflow pattern that has been running in production for over two years across ten institutional food sites.
B
Vertically extensible
The same mechanisms are relevant wherever execution has to be audit-verifiable. Food is the first vertical, not the boundary of the design.
C
Buyer-visible value
The mechanisms produce records that hold up in institutional buyer audits. Compliance is not the framing — it is the byproduct of how the work is structured.
D
Acquirer-relevant
Mechanism-level filings survive product roadmap changes and stay relevant across the verticals the architecture extends into.
Architectural Validation

Two years in production.
Ten sites. Over a million units.

Shrink Manager has been running in live production for more than two years at Anu Sushi LLC, an affiliated operator, across 10 institutional food production sites, capturing more than one million production units as structured events each year. The portfolio reflects an architecture that already works at scale, not an idea about one.

10
Production Sites
1M+
Units Captured / Yr
2+ yrs
Live In Production
12+1
Applications Pending
Portfolio Roadmap

From filing
to examination.

Twelve U.S. non-provisional applications are now pending. The next stage is USPTO examination, claim prosecution, and portfolio development as the product continues to mature in production.

Filed · 2026
Non-provisional applications
Twelve U.S. non-provisional applications are pending before the USPTO, with one additional provisional application exploring the verification direction.
In Progress
USPTO examination & production hardening
Continued operational validation in live production while the patent applications move through examination and prosecution.
Under Review
International strategy
International filing strategy is evaluated against the markets where customer and channel activity justify the cost and scope.
Where The Architecture Goes
Two doors into the rest of the platform.
The Wedge
Food & Beverage
How the mechanisms run in institutional fresh food production today — FSMA 204, international frameworks, multi-site operations.
See the food vertical →
The Horizon
Regulated Industries
How the same mechanisms extend into other regulated production environments where execution has to be audit-verifiable.
See regulated industries →

An execution-control architecture
built for the long horizon.

If you're evaluating Shrink Manager — as an operator or a channel partner — the technology and patent portfolio is the part of the story most worth understanding directly.

Talk to the Team See It Live

Channel partner inquiries welcome: partners@shrinksoftware.com

Patent status reflects twelve U.S. non-provisional patent applications pending, plus one U.S. provisional application filed, as of September 29, 2026. Patent pending does not mean a patent has been granted, and no enforceable patent rights arise unless and until patents issue. All third-party trademarks referenced elsewhere on this site are the property of their respective owners.