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:
Sep. 16, 2003
Filed:
May. 10, 2000
Boris Klots, Belmont, CA (US);
William Henry Waddington, Foster City, CA (US);
Patricia C. Grewell, San Mateo, CA (US);
Peter Ham, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Susan L. Griese, Menlo Park, CA (US);
Gerry Perham, San Francisco, CA (US);
Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, Oakland, CA (US);
Abstract
A warehouse management system that maximizes throughput and reduces carrying costs by reducing the number of stops that a container makes in the process of fulfilling a customer order. This is accomplished by allocating inventory to orders using the following series of considerations. First, the system selects a pod in order to maximize throughput. If there are multiple locations within the pod that stock the same inventory item, then the method chooses one of those locations based upon the expiration date. Finally, if multiple of these locations have units that expire within the same expiration period, the location with the fewest units is chosen.