Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Including point of sale terminal or electronic cash register
Reexamination Certificate
1994-11-10
2001-07-03
Trammell, James P. (Department: 2161)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Including point of sale terminal or electronic cash register
Reexamination Certificate
active
06256615
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to shelf label systems, and more specifically to a method of assigning electronic shelf labels to price-lookup file items.
In a traditional retail store, bar code scanners rely on price information maintained within a price-lookup (PLU) file. The PLU file is typically stored in a single location at host server.
Electronic shelf label (ESL) systems typically include a plurality of electronic displays. The electronic displays are coupled to a central server from where prices for all of the displays can be changed.
In a typical installation, one electronic shelf label is assigned to each PLU item in the store. Decisions regarding ESL assignments are typically made by store personnel. The current process implemented by such personnel involves periodically scanning items within the store with a hand-held scanner and manually recording whether a price change occurred. Store personnel review the manually gathered statistics and determine ESL assignments. This method is expensive and time consuming.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method for assigning electronic shelf labels to PLU file items which minimizes decisions by store personnel and maximizes a store's return on investment in the electronic shelf label system.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In accordance with the teachings of the present invention, a method of assigning electronic shelf labels to price-lookup file items is provided. The method includes the initial step of determining a price change frequency for each merchandise item by a computer. Then, in a first embodiment, the computer assigns electronic shelf labels to each merchandise item by a computer. Then, in a first embodiment, the computer assigns electronic shelf labels to items having a price change frequency greater than a predetermined minimum price change frequency. In a second embodiment, the computer assigns a fixed number of electronic shelf labels to items, in order of price change frequency and starting with the largest price change frequency, until the electronic shelf labels are exhausted. Finally, in a third embodiment, the computer classifies the merchandise items into a plurality of groups, and assigns the electronic shelf labels to groups containing items having a price change frequency greater than a predetermined minimum price change frequency.
The computer recognizes multiple instances of electronic shelf labels for the same PLU file item, and multiple tags for the same PLU file item. The computer sends tag printing data to a printing system.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a method of assigning electronic shelf labels to price-lookup file items.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method of assigning electronic shelf labels to price-lookup file items which assigns electronic shelf labels only to items whose prices change at a frequency greater than a predetermined frequency.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method of assigning electronic shelf labels to price-lookup items which maximizes a store's return on investment in an electronic shelf label system.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method of assigning electronic shelf labels to price-lookup items which minimizes decisions by store personnel regarding ESL assignments.
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Making Labels with a computer; Pete Scisco; Office Systems, Georgetwon; vol. 16, Mar. 1999.
Elisca Pierre Eddy
Martin Paul W.
NCR Corporation
Trammell James P.
LandOfFree
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