Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
2002-01-28
2004-10-05
Choules, Jack (Department: 2171)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
active
06801908
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to selectively presenting multi-dimensional information in a two-dimensional form using a Graphical User Interface. In particular, it relates to synthesizing and displaying information required in purchase planning, production planning or inventory planning of multiple products in one or more factories, warehouses, or retail stores.
2. Description of the Related Art
Consider a typical company that designs, manufactures, stocks (that is, keeps in its inventory), sells, and manages a wide range of products. Such a company may easily handle several thousand distinct products. For instance, a shoe company may make and sell many varieties of shoes such as jogging shoes, basketball shoes, casual shoes, dress shoes and so on, and in each variety, there may be many different forms and shapes, different colors and different sizes. Similarly, an apparel company may make and sell many varieties of apparel such as trousers, skirts, dresses, shirts, and jeans; and in each variety, there may be different shapes, fabrics, colors and sizes. Indeed, in all of the above-mentioned instances and in many others, there is a significant need to track and manage various kinds and forms of product information, including selling price, cost price, demand forecast, the number of items of the product in stock, etc.
Since the product information in all examples given above as well as in related examples tends to be voluminous, it can be usually handled more efficiently and effectively if this information is structured. Indeed, a company may effectively manage the information by classifying the products into various ‘styles’, with all the products of the same style sharing important characteristics (typically, basic shape). For each style, this company may then use certain other characteristics for further classification. For instance, a shoe-company may classify its sports shoes into three styles, say, ProJoggers, ProTennis and ProGolf (corresponding to Joggers, Tennis shoes and Golf shoes). Furthermore, this company may want to characterize the ProJoggers style by color, size and width.
To facilitate the management of information related to various products, the notion of a stock-keeping unit (SKU) was introduced several decades ago. An SKU can be considered as a numeric or alphanumeric representation of a particular product. One can therefore use a representation of SKU based on the characteristics of the product. For instance, the ProJoggers shoe style may have come in a variant of color red, size 6, and width medium. An alphanumeric SKU representation of the style might then be ‘ProJoggers/red/6/medium’.
Indeed, the number of SKUs related to a product in a typical store, warehouse, or a manufacturing company, may be very high. For instance, in the example of the shoe company given above, if the ProJoggers style of shoes comes in ten sizes, four colors and three widths, then the number of SKUs that are required to represent all possible combinations equals 10*4*3=120. And, then if the company makes, say, 50 different styles, the number of SKUs goes to 6000. Thus, there is an important need to efficiently handle the information that corresponds to the numerous SKUs.
With the advent of computers and information-technology, the handling of such a large number of SKUs has become feasible. A concise representation of products as SKUs automatically lends itself to being structured and managed in various kinds of computer databases. Hence, it is not surprising that many, if not most, product manufacturers, transporters, suppliers and sellers today manage their product information in appropriate computer databases using SKUs.
Consider the example of a footwear company that produces and sells thousands of distinct products. Various employees engaged in the running of the company need to have complete product information such as the number of units in stock for each kind of product, sale price per unit for each kind of product, phase-out date for each product, and other such product information. They may also need to convey product-related information to others, e.g. purchase orders to suppliers, without ambiguity as to which products are being referred to. The use of SKUs and automation to various degrees using computers makes these operations less tedious and time-consuming.
The operation of planning for producing and managing products typically includes preparing forecasts, maintaining and inspecting inventories, monitoring shipments, preparing purchase orders and other related operations. There are many software products in these areas that are available in prior-art; these software products manage information required for such planning operations for a large number of SKUs and for a large number of locations—be they retail stores, warehouses or factories.
Some software solutions have also been used by on-line retail stores. An on-line retail store enables a customer to browse and order various product s using the World Wide Web, Local Area Network or a Wide Area Network. Often such a store may have millions of different kinds of products. In some cases, it may even provide a “one-stop shop” to its customers. Examples of such stores are Amazon.com of Seattle, Wash., USA and eBay Inc. of San Jose, Calif., USA; each of these stores handles product information for a million or more products. Hence, such on-line stores need to handle, for a very large number of products, complete product information including the cost price, selling price, demand forecasts, units in stock, planned receipts, historical sales, ordering agreements with manufacturers, suppliers and transporters, and a lot of related information.
The product information that needs to be created and maintained by many on-line stores is so large and so dynamic in nature that it can only be efficiently handled by computer systems today. Indeed, there are software products today that facilitate the creation and maintenance of such on-line stores. Two such software products are Catalog Architect™, manufactured by IBM, of Armonk, N.Y., USA, and MBuilder™, manufactured by The Internet Factory Inc., of Pleasanton, Calif., USA. These software products provide a simple and detailed method for creating a large number of SKUs in on-line retail stores. Obviously, the underlying idea that has been used in these software products is that of assigning an individual SKU to each product in the retail store. These products are distinguished and classified at the SKU level on the basis of characteristics such as size, color, width and other such characteristics. These products or SKUs can be grouped together on the basis of these characteristics in a collection of SKUs called a SKU set. The salient feature of these software products is their ability to create SKUs that correspond to all valid combinations of various characteristics of the SKU set. For example, a shirt may be described as being available in sizes small, medium and large and in colors red, blue and green. Thus the characteristic color of the product ‘shirt’ has three values and the characteristic size of the product ‘shirt’ also has three values. Application of these software tools would lead to creation of a total of nine (=3×3) unique SKUs, in the SKU set corresponding to shirts.
The software products mentioned above allow creation of all valid SKU combinations by simply inputting the characteristics for each SKU set and the permissible set of values for each characteristic. Consider once again the case of the shoe company. Suppose that a particular SKU set, for example ‘Men's’ Sports Shoes’ is available in three styles (e.g. ProJoggers, ProTennis and ProGolf), with each style available in five sizes and three colors. Thus the characteristic size has five values and characteristic color has three values. Hence, the number of SKUs that exist in this SKU set of sports shoes is forty-five (=3×5×3). This structuring of the SKUs in form of SKU sets makes the handling of the product
Bhatia Manish
Fuloria Manas Chandra
Kumar Prashant
Botjer William L.
Choules Jack
SupplyChainge Inc
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