Data processing: generic control systems or specific application – Specific application – apparatus or process – Product assembly or manufacturing
Reexamination Certificate
1998-05-19
2001-02-06
Grant, William (Department: 2786)
Data processing: generic control systems or specific application
Specific application, apparatus or process
Product assembly or manufacturing
C700S134000, C700S215000, C700S226000, C052S519000, C052S523000, C030S152000, C427S186000, C427S187000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06185471
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods of labeling manufactured goods. More specifically, the invention relates to a method of labeling roofing shingles with information that is highly concentrated due to use of a binary coding scheme.
2. Related Art
For a variety of reasons, it is desirable to mark manufactured goods with tracking information. For example, in the roofing shingle industry, tracking information may include a slit that uniquely identifies the plant site at which a particular shingle was manufactured. Conventionally, the slit is made by passing an endless sheet of shingle material between a cutter head and an anvil roll, and a marker knife on the cutter head identifies the shingle as having been manufactured at that particular plant. Such tracking information allows a manufacturer to trace defective goods to a particular plant site, so that the defect can be investigated and remedied.
However, such simplistic labeling schemes provide little information. The bare identification of a plant site does not permit specific identification of a particular date on which a defect occurred, or the shift at that plant site that is responsible for the defect. This is a significant shortcoming when the defect occurs in only some of the shingles manufactured at the identified plant site, but not in other shingles manufactured at the same plant site. In this event, the cause of the defect cannot be localized or corrected, because the labeling system does not contain enough information to specify the exact location, date and shift of manufacture.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide a method of easily providing enough information on manufactured roofing shingles so that the time and location of their manufacture can be quickly and uniquely determined, so that any manufacturing process defects can be isolated and corrected, and to provide information to defend against false warranty claims.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is to meet the foregoing need that the present invention is directed. The goal of identifying a set of manufactured shingles specifically enough to isolate the location and time of a manufacturing defect has not been achieved conventionally, perhaps because of the requirement for the substantial amount of information that must be inscribed on the shingles to achieve the unique identification that is necessary.
According to the invention, the required location, date and shift information is cut into the shingles as a coded sequence of slits. Preferably, the slit sequence is coded using a binary coding scheme, with a separate binary number group defining each of the shift, the month, the day and the year of manufacture, in addition to plant site identification information. Based on the easily-cut, binary-coded slit sequence, used in conjunction with the plant site identification information, a manufacturer can quickly isolate the time and place of a manufacturing defect.
The invention provides a method of providing an article of manufacture with a coded indication of the article's time of manufacture. The method involves arranging a physically-ordered sequence of slit cutting knives, based on a sequence of binary digits, in which a slit cutting knife is provided in the physically-ordered sequence when a corresponding binary digit in the sequence of binary digits is a first value (e.g., 1), and a slit cutting knife is omitted from the physically-ordered sequence when a corresponding binary digit in the sequence of binary digits is a second value (e.g., 0). The binary digits in the sequence of binary digits are arranged in plural fields that represent respective time periods collectively constituting the coded indication of the article's time of manufacture. The method also involves cutting a coded sequence of slits into the article using the slit cutting knives that have been provided in the arranging step.
The invention also provides an article, such as a roofing shingle, produced by this method.
Other objects, features and advantages of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon a reading of the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments with reference to the accompanying drawings.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5278885 (1994-01-01), Davis et al.
patent: 5778536 (1998-07-01), West
patent: 5951809 (1999-09-01), Jenkins et al.
Strong et al., “World Overview O f Building-Integreated Photovoltaics” IEEE., pp. 1197-1202, 1996.
Grant William
Jacobson Price Holman & Stern PLLC
Marc McDieunel
LandOfFree
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