The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 07, 2000
Filed:
Dec. 13, 1995
David J Straub, Grover, MO (US);
Andrew C Schlueter, Edwardsville, IL (US);
Donna K Velsor, Alton, IL (US);
Ralston Purina Company, St. Louis, MO (US);
Abstract
A product rationalization system and method for automatically and objectively determining products sold by an account that are candidates for deletion from the account's inventory includes a memory and a processor communicatively coupled to the memory. The processor has means for associating account data and the product attribute data, where the account data includes an account sort measure for each product of a plurality of account products. Each product identifier of the product attribute data identifies its respective product with a product group consisting of a cluster of products that are considered substitutes for each other. Upon sorting the associated data for the products by product identifier and by account sort measure, a product of each group of products that are considered substitutes is determined to be a candidate for deletion from the account's inventory.