System and method for pallet identification based on threshold of case-level tags

• US 7,739,147 B2
• Filed: 06/06/2006
• Issued: 06/15/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/06/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Twitter Inc (X Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Branigan, James Peter, Senegal, John Kenneth, Smith, Gregory Covert, Hunt, Christian Lee
• Primary Examiner(s): Zeender; F.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Haider; Fawaad
• Application Number:
  US11/422,548
• Publication Number:
  US 20070282716A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,470 Days
• Field of Search: 705/22
• US Class Current: 705/22
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0875 Itemisation or classification of parts, supplies or services, e.g. bill of materials
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/203 Inventory monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/208 Input by product or record sensing, e.g. weighing or scanner processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0241 Advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]

Abstract

A system, method, and program product that uses statistical sampling to determine whether a pallet has been received when the pallet-level RFID tag is not read. When a shipment is unloaded, the system keeps track of the item-level RFID tags that are received. A threshold is retrieved and compared with the number of item-level RFID tags that were received. If the threshold is 50%, then the pallet would be assumed to be received and marked accordingly in the manifest if 50% of the items in the pallet were received. Threshold levels can be customized based upon the vendor shipping the goods, the type of goods being shipped, or both. In addition, the vendor quality rating and the type of good rating can be combined to form a single threshold that incorporates the vendor'"'"'s quality along with the material (interference) quality of the goods on the particular pallet.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

reading a plurality of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags that are in proximity to an RFID reader while the RFID tags, affixed to a plurality of objects, are being unloaded, wherein a plurality of the RFID tags are pallet-level RFID tags and a plurality of the RFID tags are item-level RFID tags;

marking as received each record in a manifest that corresponds to each of the read RFID tags, wherein a plurality of the marked records are item-level records and wherein at least one of the marked records is a pallet-level record;

identifying an unmarked pallet-level record in the manifest, wherein the unmarked pallet-level record was not marked as received;

tallying a count of a number of item-level records marked as received that correspond to the unmarked pallet-level record;

identifying a vendor and a type of good corresponding to the unmarked pallet-level record;

retrieving a vendor rating based upon the identified vendor;

retrieving a type of goods error rating based upon the identified type of good;

computing a threshold based upon the vendor rating and the type of goods error rating;

comparing the tallied count to the computed threshold; and

in response to the comparison revealing that the tallied count of the number of item-level records marked as received is equal to or greater than the computed threshold, marking the unmarked pallet-level record as received and marking the unmarked item-level records that correspond to the pallet-level record as likely received, and in response to the tallied count being less than the computed threshold, performing shipment error processing for the pallet corresponding to the unmarked pallet-level record.

2. A computer program product stored in a computer readable medium, comprising functional descriptive material that, when executed by a data processing system, causes the data processing system to perform actions that include:

reading a plurality of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags that are in proximity to an RFID reader while the RFID tags, affixed to a plurality of objects, are being unloaded, wherein a plurality of the RFID tags are pallet-level RFID tags and a plurality of the RFID tags are item-level RFID tags;

marking as received each record in a manifest that corresponds to each of the read RFID tags, wherein a plurality of the marked records are item-level records and wherein at least one of the marked records is a pallet-level record;

identifying an unmarked pallet-level record in the manifest, wherein the unmarked pallet-level record was not marked as received;

tallying a count of a number of item-level records marked as received that correspond to the unmarked pallet-level record;

identifying a vendor and a type of good corresponding to the unmarked pallet-level record;

retrieving a vendor rating based upon the identified vendor;

retrieving a type of goods error rating based upon the identified type of good;

computing a threshold based upon the vendor rating and the type of goods error rating;

comparing the tallied count to the computed threshold; and

in response to the comparison revealing that the tallied count of the number of item-level records marked as received is equal to or greater than the computed threshold, marking the unmarked pallet-level record as received and marking the unmarked item-level records that correspond to the pallet-level record as likely received, and in response to the tallied count being less than the computed threshold, performing shipment error processing for the pallet corresponding to the unmarked pallet-level record.