AUTOMATIC DIGITAL INVENTORY COUNTER

COMPTEUR DE STOCK NUMERIQUE AUTOMATIQUE

English Abstract

An Automatic Digital Inventory Counter for calculating and displaying the amount of inventory at any point in time. The invention comprises special shelving mechanism units arranged in rows and columns with electrical switches to sense the inventory presence. The calculations i.e. the summations are done sequentially along the way to a final display unit, thus minimizing the number of wires required in the circuit. Calculations are done through -the well known--binary digit full or half adders to calculate the totals sequentially after passing each special shelving mechanism unit. The total of each row is added to the previous row - through binary full or half adders- until the final display unit is reached, thus enabling the device to display the amount of inventory on hand. The calculations are done almost instantaneous without any error and with hundred percent accuracy.

French Abstract

Il est décrit un compteur dinventaire numérique servant à calculer et à afficher linventaire à nimporte quel moment. Cette invention comprend des unités de mécanismes de rayons arrangées en rangées et en colonnes qui comprennent des interrupteurs électriques servant à détecter la présence de linventaire. Les calculs, cest-à-dire les totalisations, se font de manière séquentielle en route vers un appareil daffichage terminal. Le circuit nécessite ainsi moins de fils électriques. Les calculs seffectuent au moyen des additionneurs complets ou des demi-additionneurs à chiffre binaire bien connus pour déterminer les totaux de manière séquentielle une fois chaque unité de mécanisme de rayon passé. Le total de chaque rayon sadditionne au total du rayon précédent par lintermédiaire dadditionneurs complets ou de demi-additionneurs binaires, jusquà latteinte de lappareil daffichage terminal. Lappareil peut ainsi afficher linventaire actuel. Le calcul seffectue presque instantanément, sans erreur et de façon parfaitement exacte.

Claims

THE EMBODIMENT OF THE INVENTION IN WHICH AN EXCLUSIVE PROPERTY
OR PRIVILEGE IS CLAIMED ARE DEFINED AS FOLLOWS:
1. A system for calculating an inventory of on-hand items, said system
comprising:
at least one special shelving mechanism unit comprising:
at least one pre-stressed metal alloy sheet that bends under the force of
gravity of
an on-hand inventory item to touch an electric connector when the inventory
item
is present hence closing an electric digital circuit and returns to original
open
position due to a pre-stressing force when the inventory item is removed;
an electronic circuit A, wherein, a subset of an electrical pre-stressed metal
alloy
sheets for detecting a presence of the on-hand item is grouped to generate an
equivalent binary number of an electrical pre-stressed metal alloy sheets
touching
their corresponding electric connectors; and
an electronic circuit B comprising a set of electronic binary digit adders
that will sum
up a first output of all electronic circuits A enclosed in the special
shelving
mechanism unit;
=
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a wiring bundle X comprising a set of at least one wire receiving the binary
representation of electronic circuit B output and providing power to the
special
shelving mechanism unit;
an electronic circuit C comprising a set of electronic binary digit adders
that adds the
number represented in the wiring bundle X with a first previous total number
of the
on-hand inventory items in the system;
an electronic circuit D comprising a set of electronic binary digit adders
that add the
number represented in the wiring bundle X with a second previous total number
of
the on-hand inventory items in the system;
a wiring bundle Z comprising a set of at least one wire that connects the
electronic
circuits D thereby summing up the total number of pre-stressed metal alloy
sheets
touching their corresponding electric connectors at its particular branch of
the circuit,
the wiring bvndle Z can also supply power to electronic circuits D; and
an electronic display unit connected to wiring bundle Z to display a final
number of
the at least one pre-stressed metal alloys touching the electric connectors
thereby
revealing a final total number of the on-hand inventory items positioned on a
plurality
of special shelving mechanism units.
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2. The system of claim 1, wherein the electronic circuit A can group at
least one of the
pre-stressed metal alloy sheet in the at least one special shelving mechanism
unit.
3. The system of claim 1, wherein the electronic circuit B comprises a
combination of zero
or more half binary digit adders and zero or more full binary digit adders.
4. The system of claim 1, 2 or 3 wherein electronic circuit B performs the
binary addition
on the output of all electronic circuits A embodied in the at least one
special shelving
mechanism unit.
5. The system of claim 1, 2, 3 or 4 wherein the electronic circuits A, B, C
and D together
with wiring bundles X and Z can be replaced by an action of one or more
digital
microcontroller.

Description

Automatic Digital Inventory Counter
Field of the Invention:
The present invention relates to an automatic digital system for calculating
the
number of inventory items on hand. Although used for various types of
inventory, such
system will be mainly used for inventory count of relatively expensive items
such as
tobacco displays at retail stores, memory units for computers or expensive
pens and
similar items.
Back Ground:
Such system is not currently available in the market. Retailers, store
managers and
wholesale staff resort to manual counts with paper and pencil. Even helping
devices such
as ''Portable Data Terminals" PDT involves the process of manually counting
the items
on hand. My invention automatically calculates the number of inventory items
on hand at
any point on time and displays the number constantly on a display unit. It is
often very
desirable in the retail business field to accurately calculate the number of
inventory items
on hand to help identify and prevent shrink problems. Using the PDT still
involves the
process of manually counting the items, which gives room for error, inaccuracy
and
wasting the time. Specifically, in the fast paced retail stores it is often
tedious ¨virtually
impossible- to identify shrink through manual counts because items are being
sold during
the count and also because of the inaccuracy inherited in the process of the
manual count
itself. Prior art similar to this invention utilizes a light source, a load or
a pressure sensor
to determine presence of inventory item. These methods rendered to be
unfeasible or
extremely expensive. I found that these disadvantages will be overcome by
introducing
my system, which constantly and precisely displays the total number of
inventory items
in a certain display, a group of displays, or a whole store at any point on
time.
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Summary of the Invention:
A system for calculating an inventory of on-hand items comprising: at least
one special
shelving mechanism unit comprising at least one pre-stressed metal alloy sheet
that bends
under the force of gravity of an on-hand inventory item to touch an electric
connector
when the inventory item is present hence closing as electric digital circuit
and returns to
original open position due to the pre-stressing force when the inventory item
is removed.
The system also uses electronic circuits named A, B, C and D to perform the
summation
for the counts of on-hand inventory items to reach a final count that will be
displayed on
a digital display. The circuits are interconnected with wiring bundles named
X, Y and Z
responsible for carrying the digital signals between circuits and the special
shelving
mechanism units. It is digitally feasible to replace all the electronics
circuits and the
wiring bundles with a single or multiple microcontrollers.
List of Drawings:
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be more readily understood
with the reference to the attached figures, wherein, Figure 1 is a general
layout for all
parts of the invention and the way these parts are interconnected together.
Figure 2 is
three views for the special shelving mechanism unit. Figure 3 is an
implementation of
electronic circuit A which is embodied in each special shelving mechanism
unit. Figure 4
is an implementation of electronic circuit B embodied in each special shelving
mechanism unit. Figure 5 represents an intermediate electronic circuit C,
Figure 5 also
depicts a preceding and a following wiring bundle Y.
Figure 6 depicts an intermediate electronic circuit C together with a final
electronic
circuit D (numeral 19). Figure 7 depicts the final electronic circuit D in the
invention
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together with the display unit. Figure 8 is a cross sectional view for a
possible
commercial embodiment for the special shelving mechanism unit, where it
contains a
Printed Circuit Board (PCB), a flexible metal flap to act as a switch by
bending down ¨
under the weight of inventory item- to touch a metal connector thus closing a
digital
circuit under this inventory item indicating its presence.
Preferred Embodiment of the Invention:
The present invention consists of a system for digitally and automatically
counting the number of inventory items on a display. In one aspect of the
invention, the
invention comprises a special shelving mechanism unit (numeral 10) that holds
inventory
items in place. The units can be arranged in rows and columns according to the
design of
the retail store. The special shelving mechanism unit is equipped with sensors
to sense
the presence of each inventory item. The sensor can be simply an electrical
switch that is
set to on when the inventory item is present, and set to off when no item is
present. The
main problem to face this approach is that we would have a non-manageable
number of
wires in the circuit. Thus, the special shelving mechanism unit embodies an
electronic
circuit, which is referred to as electronic circuit A, which will group a set
of switches at
the on position by generating the binary representation for the number of
those switches.
An example of such grouping is illustrated in figure 3, where the switches are
grouped in
sets of three switches. Other embodiments could group the switches in sets of
2 or 4 or
any number. The numeral 12 identifies electronic circuit A in all other
figures. The output
of all such electronic circuits A is passed on to another electronic circuit
which is referred
to as electronic circuit B. Electronic circuit B is a set of binary digit
adders and half
adders that will perform the binary addition for the outputs of all circuits
A, thus,
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enabling us to identify the number of items present on each special shelving
mechanism
unit. Circuit B is illustrated in figure 3 and is given the numeral 13 in the
rest of the
drawings of the invention. The number of items is represented in binary
notation,
accordingly, the output of electronic circuit A is carried through a wiring
bundle named
electric wire bundle X. Electric wire bundle X is assigned the numeral 14 in
the attached
drawings of the invention. As each row of the display will hold many of those
special
shelving mechanism units, we must add the numbers as we go along the row to
minimize
the number of wires reaching the final display unit.
Electric Wire bundle X will supply its output to electronic circuit C, which
is
comprised of a set of electronic binary digit adders. Electronic circuit C
will perform the
binary addition on its two inputs. Electronic circuit C is assigned the
numeral 17 in the
attached drawings. The first input is the input from the electric wire bundle
X and the
second is the input from electric wire bundle Y. The second input i.e. the
input from
electric wire bundle Y is the binary representation of all switches at the on
position ¨so
far- along this row of the system. By adopting this mechanism I was able to
minimize the
number of wires needed to implement the system. Without such mechanism, it
would be
virtually impossible to implement such a system. The idea of sequentially
adding along
the way makes the counting possible, as we will only need a few number of
wires to carry
the binary signal.
Electric wire bundle Y comprises a set of wires to carry the binary
representation
of the number of switches set at the on position along each row ¨for example a
shelf- in
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the system. Electric wire bundle Y is represented in the drawings by the
numerals 15, 24
and 25. A preceding wire bundle Y (numeral 24) is a wire bundle that gives an
input to
electronic circuit C. A following wire bundle Y (25) is a wire bundle Y that
receives an
output from an electronic circuit C. It is worth noting that a single wire
bundle Y in the
system can possess both qualifiers. In other words, an electric wire bundle Y
can be a
preceding wire bundle Y for some electronic circuit C and ¨at the same time-
can be a
following wire bundle Y for another electronic circuit C.
At the end of each row, we can allocate an electronic circuit C with the
qualifier
"end unit". This end unit electronic circuit C is typically implemented as all
other
electronic circuits C in the system, however, the output of this end unit
electronic circuit
C is passed on to electronic circuit D. Electronic circuit C can have another
qualifier
which is "start unit". This start unit is illustrated in the drawings by the
numeral 22. The
start unit electronic circuit C will have only one input coming from electric
wire bundle
X and one output conveyed to electric wire bundle Y. The other input will be
considered
zero as this is a beginning of a row and we do not have any preceding shelving
mechanism unit so far in the system.
Elect:onic circuit D (illustrated in the figures by the numerals 19, 20 and
21) is an
electronic circuit comprising a set of binary digit adders. In a typical
application of the
system, we would expect electronic circuit D to be bigger than or equal to
electronic
circuit C in size, depending on the application and the design of the system.
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Electronic circuits D are interconnected by wiring bundle Z which is
illustrated in
the figures by the numeral 16. The best way to understand the function of
electronic
circuit D is to view this circuit as the entity responsible for generating the
totals vertically
i.e. between the rows. In a typical application, we will start from row one
and proceed till
the last row and finally we will reach the display unit. The qualifier "start
unit" to
electronic circuit D is assigned to the first circuit in the system, such
start unit is
characterized by receiving only one input via an electric wire bundle Y and
the other
input is considered to be zero.
Electronic circuit D has another qualifier named "final unit" which is
illustrated in
the figures by the numeral 20 in the drawings. We can define the final unit as
the unit
giving its output to the final display unit. Typically, we would have only one
final
electronic circuit D in the system.
Electronic circuits D are interconnected through wiring bundle Z, which
comprises a set of wires to carry the binary representation of the totals
among rows
(sequentially) in the system. The total starts from electronic circuit D
"start unit" (21) and
proceeds among rows. After passing each row the total of this row is added to
the total
calculated so far in the system. The final total proceeds to the following row
and so on
and so forth until we reach the final unit of electronic circuit D and finally
we reach the
display unit.
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The display unit is the unit responsible for displaying the final number of
total
inventory items to the user of the system. The display unit will be
implemented by digital
circuits that will convert the binary representation of the number
¨represented in
electronic wire bundle Z entering the unit- to digital numbers understood by a
regular
user of the system. The display unit is assigned the numeral 23 in the
attached drawings.
The sensor mechanism can be implemented commercially as depicted in figure 8,
where the switches can be replaced by a flexible metal sheet (numeral 31) that
can bend
down under the weight of the inventory unit to touch the electric connector
(numeral 29)
to close the circuit and pass the output to the electronic circuit A attached
to the Printed
Circuit Board (numeral 30) embodied in the special shelving mechanism unit.
In another embodiment of the invention, we can group electronic circuits C and
D
with all their qualifiers i.e. numerals (17 and 18) in one resilient
embodiment to facilitate
the production of the system commercially. This embodiment is assigned the
numeral 32
.. in the attached drawings. The rest of electronic circuits i.e. electronic
circuit D with all its
qualifiers (19, 20 and 21) can be embodied in the final display unit. This
embodiment is
depicted in figure 9 of the drawings, where I only depict a partial system to
present the
idea and the general layout.
Although only a single embodiment of the present invention has been described
and illustrated, the present invention is not limited to the features of this
embodiment, but
includes all variations and modifications within the scope of the claims.
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Representative Drawing