Printed matter – Method
Reexamination Certificate
2002-01-02
2004-05-18
Fridie, Jr., Willmon (Department: 3722)
Printed matter
Method
C283S070000, C283S036000, C283S038000, C402S079000, C281S038000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06736428
ABSTRACT:
STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
None.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The concept of a “process” is well known. In life, processes abound. Some are natural—as in the conception, gestation and birth of a child. Some are formulated and established by individuals in their daily lives—a person preparing for the start of a workday by going through a series of steps starting with awakening and ending with arrival on the job. A Process is a collection or series of related steps.
It is advantageous that 1) a process be comprised of consecutively performable steps; 2) the instructions on how to perform a process be a part of the Process itself; 3) that a step be capable of holding documents; and that 4) when documents are stored in or removed from or altered during a step, the resulting documents are immediately available to all physically linked steps, which may include steps of other processes.
The title of a step in a process should be the primary function to be performed and should preferably begin with a one-word action verb such as ‘submit . . . ’ or ‘receive . . . ’ or ‘gather . . . ’. Further, as a user enters a step of a process, the user should have at hand any necessary documents, accumulated from set-aside documents of predecessor steps and documents found directly in the step about to be performed. It should be pointed out that a step of a process may be devoid of documents or contain ‘null’ documents such that only the action provided by the step is necessary to accomplish the step. Such a step of a process might be: ‘Verify that the lights are on in the warehouse’.
If the documents of a step within a process are to be used by any steps within any other related processes, it is of great value to have the steps linked, so that the documents developed by one step are readily available to other linked steps without further physical movement of developed documents. In this sense, a Process is a collection of documents—multiply titled by action verbs, each of which represents an ordered step of a Process in which said documents are acted upon.
2. Description of the Related Art
Process Management often involves the development of documents. A well-established approach of prior art is to focus on the efficient collection and organization of documents for ease of accessibility by the use of organizers, while the instructions on how to process such documents are kept separate from the documents themselves. A process management system is most often comprised of two separate major pieces; 1) the apparatus or the set of devices employed to develop documents and 2) the ‘how to’ instructions or method(s) on how to employ the apparatus. Therefore, most often, a user must come to a process management with some prior instructional knowledge on how to perform the associated process or processes.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore the objective of the present invention to overcome the drawback of the prior art and to provide a Process Management System that: 1) has the instructions on how to perform the process built into the execution of the Process itself; 2) establishes process steps that are consecutively ordered for ease of execution; 3) allows for the storage within process steps of developed; and 4) through a mechanism of linking steps of processes allows for the presentation of relevant documents to one step that were developed in other steps without separate retrieval by a current step. The present invention makes the process procedure an integral part of the documents that may be developed during the process and related processes that may utilize some of the same documents.
In addition, during the invention process of the Process Management System, a host of sub-inventions that further enhance the capabilities of the Process Management System was developed and will be discussed. In addition, these subinventions can stand alone as organizational enhancement products in any number of other related venues.
The present invention combines into a single system the method and means of managing the dispositions of documents as they move through their life-cycles under the control of a processes.
These and other related objectives are achieved according to the invention by a system that provides for performing the consecutively-ordered steps of a process and making resulting acted-upon documents readily available to subsequent linked steps comprising the same or other processes.
The embodiment chosen for invention illustration uses: 1) a standard ring binder with tabbed dividers as the organizer and 2) a student's academic day as the systematization target—having documents as the systematized documents. Because the invention is a ‘Process Management System’, it is obvious that many embodiments of the invention are possible—covering many Process-based applications—without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
Other objects and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description considered in connection with the accompanying drawings. It is to be understood, however, that the drawings are designed as an illustration only and not as a definition of the limits of the invention.
Glossary of Terms
Glossary of Terms:
Holder
An apparatus or method of holding materials in a logical order where such materials include
dividers, documents and other things. Examples of such a holder includes, but is not limited to:
ring binder, folder, clamp binder, a series of pockets, pocket folder, Acco-press binder, placing
sheets between unbound leaves, accordion folder, file drawers, prong- fastener, metal pin
fastener, hand-held while maintaining proscribed order, etc.
Raw edge
For example, taking a rectangular piece of unfinished corrugated cardboard and folding it
produces a smooth roll at the roll point, but leaves all other edges in their natural or raw
state.
Document:
Comprising any materials, where a document is the symbolic representation of such materials;
Divider:
A device used to separate documents for some purpose.
Step:
A discrete performable event within a process having an order among all the steps belonging to
the process
Tab:
A way of locating a particular divider. One divider may have more than one tab.
Process tab
A tab on a divider that corresponds to a step in a Process. A step is performed by selecting a
process tab.
Tab link
Two or more tabs on a divider are said to be linked.
Slipcase:
A box with one end open to allow for the insertion of an object - in this context a holder.
Tabbing System
A method and means of creating paper tabs from pressure-sensitive label material.
Paper Fastener
A method and means of attaching documents together with a fastener fashioned from pressure-
sensitive label material.
Reversible Divider:
Bottom-tabbed Dividers constructed in such a fashion as to allow for reversibility.
Double-sided Folder:
A means for establishing a single 2-part Folder with a double-sided access.
Enhanced Binder:
A Binder with properties that allow the
Binder an expanded scope of usage.
Topic Labels:
A means for enhancing learning &
organization by placing graphics onto
pressure-sensitive labels which may then
be dynamically attached to common note
paper so that a user may add descriptive
value.
Labeling conventions for a:
Process:
Process#:“name-of-the-process”
ex.
:
Process1:Class-session
Step:
Step#:“name-of-the-step”
ex.
:
Step4:GATHER
Process & Step: Process#:name/Step#:name
ex.
:
Process1:Class-session/
Step4:GATHER
shorthand
:
P#/S# or P#S#
ex.
:
Step5,Process2 is P2/S5
Figure element
Drawing-element/#
ex.
:
Drawing-element/5-12
where 5 refers to FIG. #5 and
12 refers to element-12 on
FIG. #5.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4240761 (1980-12-01), Jacobson
patent: 4330951 (1982-05-01), Hauer
patent: 4375925 (1983-03-01), Grummich
patent: 4832374 (1989-05-01), Prest, Jr.
patent: 4962951 (1990-10-01), Mechesney
patent: 5338126 (1994-08-01), Mullin et al.
patent: 5503435 (1996-04-01), Kline
patent: 5674021 (1997-10-01), H
Fridie Jr. Willmon
Garvey Christopher B.
Nolte Nolte & Hunter
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