Walmart Apollo, LLC

Roger Snelgrove

Matthew Allen Jones

Robert J Taylor

Rahul Tripathi

Methods and apparatuses are provided to automatically identify overstated perpetual inventory (PI) conditions regarding an inventory level of an item in a retail space. For example, in some embodiments, a method performed by a control circuit comprises determining () that, a plurality of times, an item for sale at a retail store sells within a defined tolerance of a non-zero inventory quantity value and then stops selling for a period of time; and making () a determination that an overstated PI condition exists with respect to an inventory level of the item at the retail store. In some embodiments, the overstated PI condition is automatically quantified and may be automatically corrected.

Apparatus and method of identifying an overstated perpetual inventory in a retail space

Aspects and embodiments are directed to systems for determining counting accuracy of products, including retail products. The system for determining counting accuracy can interface with other inventory systems to access or receive information on inventory of the retail products. The inventory information can include, for example, numbers of units in inventory, shelf space accorded to respective products, package size (i.e., number of units available per package), retail value, margin value, among other options. The system can manage physical counts made on respective products. In some examples, the system can determine a value associated with physically counting inventory of respective product(s), for example, as a function of a number of units on-hand, time since the product has been counted, and a presentation value. Responsive to determining the value associated with physically counting the respective product, the system triggers a physical count or can prohibit a physical count of a product.

System and method for increasing counting accuracy

A received item has a machine-readable timecode placed thereon. A storage area that contains this item is correlated with that timecode to provide correlated information. That correlated information is used to automatically determine when to move that item from that storage area to a display area. So configured, an item received at a product-receiving area of a retail shopping facility can have a label placed thereon, the label bearing a current time. After placing this labeled item in a non-public storage area of the retail shopping facility a handheld code scanner can help correlate a particular timecode/item with a particular machine-readable location code in the non-public storage area. That correlated information is used to automatically determine when to move that item from the non-public storage area to a retail display area of the retail shopping facility. So configured, earlier-received items can be reliably moved in this manner before later-received items.

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Fayetteville, AR, United States of America

Roger Snelgrove