Inventory system, devices, and methods thereof

A shelving system comprising:

• a shelving unit having:
• shelves with shelf locations thereon, the shelf locations being spread laterally across each of the shelves and being discrete from each other;
• weight sensors that are each associated with one of the shelf locations for measuring weight of supplies positioned on the shelf location associated therewith;
• and
• one or more activity sensors for detecting physical activity associated with the shelf locations;
• containers configured to hold medical supplies and that each include a container identification tag having a unique identifier;
• and
• a control system that receives signals from the weight sensors and the one or more activity sensors and outputs to an inventory computing system weight measurements according to the weight sensors and activity information according to the one or more activity sensors;
• wherein the control system associates the unique identifier of each of the containers with one of the medical supplies to be stored in the container having the container identification tag;
• wherein the one or more activity sensors include container identification sensors that are each associated with one of the shelf locations and configured to read the container identification tags of the containers to identify the one of the containers on the shelf location associated therewith, and wherein the physical activity includes one or both of placement or removal of the container from the shelf location;
• and
• wherein when one of the containers is moved from one of the shelf locations to another of the shelf locations, the container identification sensor of the other shelf locations reads the container identification sensor of the one container and sends a signal to the control system according to which the control system one or more of associates the one container with the other shelf location, associates the medical supply stored in the one container with the other shelf location, or provides a notification to a user.

A method for determining quantities of medical supplies comprising:

• providing a shelving unit having one or more shelves storing medical supplies, each of the one or more shelves including shelf locations that are discrete locations spread laterally thereacross at which weight supported by the shelf is measurable with weight sensors independent of all others of the shelf locations of that same shelf, and each of the shelf locations including one or more weight sensors for measuring the weight of one of the medical supplies supported thereat;
• storing, with a computing system, for each medical supply, a supply identifier and an incremental weight;
• storing, with the computing system, for each shelf location, the supply identifier of the medical supply stored therein and one or both of the weight measured by the one or more weight sensors or a quantity of the medical supply stored thereon;
• associating each of the shelf locations with only one of the medical supplies at a time;
• measuring, with one or more weight sensors, the weights of the medical supplies stored on the shelf locations;
• sensing physical activity associated with the shelving unit;
• and
• determining, with the computing system, the quantity of each of the medical supplies at each of the shelf locations according to the incremental weight of the medical supply, the weight measured at the shelf location, and the physical activity detected at the shelf location.