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:
Jan. 08, 2002
Filed:
Jun. 19, 1998
Ralf Krenzke, St. Leon-Rot, DE;
Georg Dopf, Schwetzingen, DE;
Stefan Hirschenberger, Walldorf, DE;
Ralf Dentzer, Hockenheim, DE;
SAP Aktiengesellschaft, , DE;
Abstract
A data model for a supply chain is provided whereby individual working steps in a production process are defined as activities, and organized groups of such activities are defined as orders. Activities are allocated to no more than one resource and contain information concerning the start and finish time for the activity, any resource on which the activity is currently scheduled, and a list of alternative resources, if any. Activities are linked to each other via auxiliary objects, which contain information concerning the minimum and maximum time between activities. Orders may contain input and/or output interface nodes, representing the materials consumed and produced by the offer. Each output interface node representing a quantity of material created from one order is linked via an auxiliary object to respective input interface node or nodes from other orders that are scheduled to receive that material. Order anchors are defined whereby a planning algorithm can easily reference an order by its order number in a database table. Planning object anchors allow the planning algorithm to access all the orders for a given material, and resource anchors permit access to all activities scheduled for that resource.