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AssigneeNone recorded
InventorsMatthew A. Waller, Earl F. Dulaney, Milan Milatovic, David C. Johnson
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The present invention involves a system, method and article of manufacture that first garners user input criteria necessary to analyze and communicate a redistribution of product demand whenever a new target product is added to, or an existing target product is deleted from, a product assortment. In the invention's preferred embodiment, the user is provided with a graphical user interface to facilitate acceptance of required user input criteria, and then passes such garnered information to a user selectable redistribution demand processing model, which analyzes and processes the user's input criteria to develop and communicate a demand redistribution product set for focus products affected by said target product's deletion or addition.
An inventory product demand method to enable a user to analyze and redistribute product assortment demand when adding a target product to an assortment of products based on specified user criteria, said method comprising:
An inventory product demand method to enable a user to analyze and redistribute product assortment demand when deleting a target product from an assortment of products based on specified user criteria, said method comprising:
A computer readable medium encoded with a computer program to analyze and project a redistributed product assortment demand when adding a target product to an assortment of products based on specified user criteria comprising:
A computer readable medium encoded with a computer program to analyze and project a redistributed product assortment demand when deleting a target product from an assortment of products based on specified user criteria, said method comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
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From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.
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Logistics, e.g. warehousing, loading or distribution; Inventory or stock management: inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling,…
Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders: using inventory planning
Point-of-sale [POS] network systems: inventory monitoring
Using inventory planning: by shelf level inventory management, e.g. planograms
Term end not estimated
USPTO file history isn’t available for this patent, so only indexed dates are shown.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to inventory management systems and processes at the retail, wholesale and/or distributor level. In particular, the present invention involves a system, method and article of manufacture that optimizes inventory and merchandising space utilization based upon cost, lost sales, profit, and sales volume with or without considering physical space constraints. In addition, the present invention allows for this optimization in a collaborative environment. Furthermore, the present invention involves a system, method and article of manufacture to determine and communicate the redistribution of product demand whenever a new target product is added to, or an existing target product is deleted from an assortment of products.
2. Known Art
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a preferred computer system of an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a flow diagram illustrating the general operation of one embodiment of the instant invention.
FIG. 3 is an illustration of a representative graphical user interface used for importing data required for the optimization analysis.
The present invention may be practiced in a client server configuration, a mainframe terminal configuration, or a personal computer network configuration including, but not limited to, wide area networks, local area networks, campus area networks, application service model, or indeed any combination thereof. All such configurations are well known by those reasonably skilled in the art.
An exemplary embodiment of the present invention is illustrated in FIG. 1. This system 20 consists of a server 30 and at least one client 50. The server 30 consists of a processor 32 with memory 34, as well as an optimizer database 36 and an optimizing process 40. Each client 50 consists of a processor 52 with memory 54, input 56, and output 58, as well as local data 60. To perform merchandise optimization, only one client 50 is required. To perform collaboration, at least two clients 50, 50A must be involved in the optimization process and these clients interact through the server. It should be noted that multiple clients can access the server simultaneously.
The optimization process 40 of the present invention uses the local data 60 imported into the optimizer database 36 to enable a user to efficiently manage inventory for virtually any retail industry. The optimization process 40 may solve for the product set that offers the lowest possible total cost, highest possible economic profit, highest possible unit sales, highest possible sales revenue, highest possible gross margin, or a weighted combination of any of these objectives for the set of products being analyzed. This process 40 can be performed, for the first two objectives, in both unconstrained and constrained modes. The process for the remaining objectives can be performed in constrained mode only. In the unconstrained mode, the solution that is provided does not take into account physical space constraints. In the constrained mode, the solution that is provided takes into account the amount of space available for the product set and may delete an item if that improves the solution. In either mode, the proposed optimal solution is expressed in numbers of facings of the products or in optimal shelf inventory level. Comparisons between the current number of facings and the optimal number of facings by product yield cost savings of the proposed set of products over the current set of products.