Nova Patents
US20030110102A1

Method for goods arrangement and its system

Claim Score by NHIP

Read claim 11, the broadest

Abstract

The present invention discloses a method for goods arrangement and its system for placing the goods into a storage space (such as container, a box car, a cargo bay of a plane, a cargo ship, a goods shelf of a storehouse and pallet). The arrangement method of the present invention makes fully use of the storage space by representing the space in spatial representation and considering all kinds of factories of the goods and the storage space. Furthermore, the method of the present invention can also computes the loading and unloading priority of the goods, the location of the goods, the total weight of the storage space and the space utilization rate. The present invention also combines a heuristic algorithm and a drawing interface for developing a system for goods arrangement to improve the space utilization rate.

US20030110102A1, drawing sheet 1
Sheet 1 of 18

Term

Term ended

Projected expiry passed 29 May 2021, 5.3 years ago.

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  4. Today

35 claims: 4 independent, 31 dependent

  1. 1
    A method of arranging goods for use in goods transportation and storage, comprising the following steps:(a) inputting related information of the goods, which should be placed into a storage space, wherein the related information at least comprises the size of the goods;(b) determining a placing priority of the goods in accordance with a ranking rule;(c) selecting goods of the first priority for placing into the storage space;(d) placing the selected goods into an available space;(e) searching and combining available spaces in the storage space;(f) determining whether goods of the next priority exist or not, if it is affirmative, proceeding to the step (g);otherwise, proceeding to the step (i) (g) treating the goods of the next priority as the selected goods at the moment;(h) inspecting whether the size of the available space in the storage space is larger than the size of the selected goods or not, if it is affirmative, proceeding to step (c);otherwise proceeding to step (f);and (i) outputting the result of the goods arrangement.
  2. 11
    Broadest claimClaim Score 61, broad(NHIP)A method for arranging goods for use in goods transportation and storage, comprising the following steps:(a) inputting related information of the goods, which should be placed into a storage space, wherein the related information at least comprises the size of the goods;(b) determining the priority for arranging the goods according to a ranking rule;(c) searching and combining available spaces of the storage space;(d) determining whether the available space of the storage space exists or not, if it is affirmative, then proceeding to the step (e);otherwise, proceeding to the step (g);(e) selecting goods according to a heuristic algorithm and arranging the selected goods into an available space;(f) determining whether the unselected goods exist or not, if it is affirmative, then proceeding to step (c);otherwise, proceeding to step (g);and (g) stopping the operation and outputting the result.
  3. 21
    A system for arranging goods for use in goods transportation and storage, comprising:a database for storing related information of a storage space and the goods, which should be placed into the storage space, wherein the related information at least comprises the size of the goods and the available space of the storage space;a core computation engine electrically connected to the database for computing a priority of the goods, location and orientation by a heuristic algorithm, wherein the heuristic algorithm comprising the steps as follow: (a) selecting the goods of a next priority in accordance with the ranking rule, if the size of the available space is smaller than the size of the selected goods;(b) rotating the base of the selected goods for a perfect orientation;(b) keeping the selected goods upright;(c) stacking the selected goods for building a vertical column;and (d) combining vertical columns for building a lateral wall or a longitudinal wall;and an I/O mechanism electrically connected to the core computation engine for listing the information of the goods and illustrating the loading pattern of the goods.
  4. 29
    A computer readable medium which is used to record a method of arranging goods, which method being used for the goods transportation and to instruct the computer performing the steps as follow:(a) inputting related information of the goods, which should be put into a storage space, in which the related information at least comprises the size of the goods;(b) determining a placing priority of the goods in accordance with a ranking rule;(c) selecting goods of the first priority for placing into the storage space;(d) placing the selected goods into an available space;(e) searching and combining available spaces in the storage space;(f) determining whether goods of next priority exist or not, if it is affirmative, proceeding to the step (g);otherwise, proceeding to the step (i) (g) treating the goods of the next priority as the selected goods at the moment;(h) inspecting whether the available space of the storage space is larger than the size of the selected goods or not;if it is affirmative, proceeding to step (c);otherwise, proceeding to step (f);and (i) outputting the result of the goods arrangement.
Independent claims4