WO1992013769A1

WO1992013769A1 - Arrangement for price labelling of articles

Info

Publication number: WO1992013769A1
Application number: PCT/SE1991/000073
Authority: WO
Inventors: Lennart Westerlund
Original assignee: Trinics Ab
Priority date: 1991-02-01
Filing date: 1991-02-01
Publication date: 1992-08-20

Abstract

The invention relates to an arrangement for price labelling of articles. It is characterized in that it comprises one checkout desk known per se having for instance one or more conveyors (17, 18, 19) for carrying articles and having scanners (13, 21, 22) for reading the identity of the articles. One or more labelling arrangements (30) which are intended to automatically price label the articles independence of information received from the scanners (13, 21, 22) are arranged at the end of the conveyor band of the checkout desk.

Description

ARRANGEMENT FOR PRICE LABELLING OF ARTICLES

TECHNICAL FIELD:

The present invention relates to an arrangement for price labelling of articles marked with codes.

PRIOR ART:

In the detail trade it is today usual that articles that are to be sold are provided with codes for identifying the article. These codes are intended to be read at the checkout desk where either a cashier moves the article having the codes past a code reader or the article is automatically moved forward on a conveyor past a code reader that gives information to a computer so that the price of the article is automatically printed on a receipt paper. Checkout desks having automatic arrangements for identifying the goods and printing out receipts are described in for instance the Swedish patent 8901707-3 or the PCT-application SE90/00043.

To inform the customer what price he or she has to pay for the article they intend to buy, so called shelf front labels are arranged on the shelves for the articles and price labels are glued directly on the articles in ques¬ tion. In this way the customer will very often be informed of the price of the article in two places.

THE TECHNICAL PROBLEM:

To mark each article that is to be sold with a price label is a comprehensive and expensive work. Within the trade one has therefore during a long time discussed and tried to replace this direct price label marking with something else. One motive to avoid the price label marking when the article is on the shelf is also that the price of the article can be changed so that re-marking of articles that already have been put on the shelf has to be done. The price can be changed during the day and it is then diffi¬ cult to have the re-marking of all articles done so that a correct price is put on the article. A result of this lacking re-marking can be that the customer will have to pay another price than the one which is written on the article which of course will give rise to dissatisfaction. It has therefore long been a desire to be able to avoid this price label marking on the articles but at the same time be able to give the customer an exact information about the price of the article he or she wants to buy.

THE SOLUTION: According to the present invention one has solved the above problem and brought about an arrangement for price label¬ ling of articles which is characterized in that it compri¬ ses a checkout desk having one or more conveyors for the articles and scanners for reading the identity of the article and one or more marking arrangements which are intended to automatically price label the articles in dependence of the information received from the scanner.

According to the invention the labelling arrangements comprises a printing device for the price labels.

It is according to the invention also possible to let the labelling arrangement comprise a printing means for direct printing of the price on the article.

If the labelling arrangement brings about price labels it should suitably comprise an arrangement for putting the price labels on the articles. The price information to the labelling arrangements is intended to be supplied from a computer which is adapted to receive the identity of the articles from the scanners.

Further the checkout desk according to the invention can comprise a scale which is intended to give information of the weight of some articles to the computer of the checkout desk.

ADVANTAGES:

Through the present invention one gets the advantage that the articles are labelled with the price which in fact has been paid to the cashier. Herethrough the customer can as long as he has the article see how much he has paid for it and plan his coming purchases. Besides the advantage that the customer attains herethrough the shop also wins the advantage that one does not have to label the articles at the same time as one gives the customer the wanted price label.

The invention will be further described below in connection to the figure which schematically shows an overview of a checkout desk at which two arrangements for feeding articles have been set up.

According to the figure a checkout desk 1 has two arrange¬ ments 3 and 4 according to the invention. The are arranged parallel to each other so that they form a space 5 between each other. The in the figure outwardly directed ends of the arrangements 3 och 4 are in the following called the input place 6 and those turned towards left are called the output place 7. At the inner end of the space 5 a place 8 has been arranged for the service personal which in front of herself has a cashregister 9. The two arrangements 3 and 4 have each at the input place a working surface 12 with a scanner 13. From the working surface 12 a conveyor 15 runs which conveyor comprises means for transport formation of the articles.

The conveyors 15 have been made with transporting means in the shape of band or chain mats in three different sec¬ tions. Firstly a section 17 runs from the working surface 12 towards the right end of the arrangements in the figure. Transverse to this in the direction towards the space 5 another section 18 is running. This one in its turn connects to a scale 14 which changes into a longitudinal section 19 closest to the space 5. It runs (to the left in the figure) into an article collecting table 20 at the respective output place 7.

Along the respective section 17 a by-pass control has been arranged in the shape of a photosensor arrangement 21. At the start of the section 19 a further scanner 22 has been mounted.

The cashier 9 will accordingly be sitting between the two arrangements 3 and 4 and it is pressumed that the sitting place is such that the cashier can swing to work with either one or the other side. On the cashregister 9 located straight ahead of the cashier a key board for manual feeding of weight and price information and other not automatically fed data is arranged. Besides that displays for the presentation of data and means for printing receipts and the like are provided.

In the figure the way of the articles is indicated with arrows. The first arrow 26 shows the way of the articles on the section 17 when the customer has picked them from the customer waggon and put them on the working surface 12. An arrow 27 shows the reversed direction of movement of the articles on the section 18. An arrow 28 shows the way of the articles on the section 19 moving towards the output place when the price registering and paying operations are performed.

The sections of the conveyor are arranged to be driven with the upper transporting part normally running in the direction as the arrows show. However, they are steered by the function of different organs to be stopped or alterna- tively to be reversed against the direction of the arrows.

These organs are the two scanners 13 and 22, namely the receiving of respective codes of the articles or which also can occur that no reading of the codes occurs. The codes scanned are electronically compared with the information contained in the central computer of the store by which one price indication for each article is the most important part of the system. The photosensor arrangement 21 is adapted to sense the passage of the articles when being further fed on the section 17 to the following sections 18 and 19. The cashier has also the possibility to manually conduct the start and stop of the conveyors or their respective movement directions.

The object of the arrangement is that when the articles having been put into the arrangement by the customer and the customer has made the initial operations: manual code reading and putting the articles on the section 17 they are transported further without further handling from the customer until they are collected at the putout place 7. On its way between the input place and the output place the optical code is registered by means of the scanners 13 and 22 which the articles have been labelled with. This occurs through manual handling of the articles at the scanner 13 but automatically when being transported by at 22. Arrange- ments having the function that in this way discover and read a code is known earlier.

However, the articles must at the reading pass the reading arrangements one by one. If more articles are stapled on each other or are located close to each other it could occur that only one article was registered in spite of several passing the reading arrangement.

Even if the articles are transported in a way which is favourable for the reading past the reading arrangements and one can pressume that the customer has been asked to control that the code marking is not turned downwardly it can still occur that articles are not registered as they may lay unsuitably or they simply lack a code. One can prefer that articles collected by the customer himself and which have to be weighed such as fruit and vegetables are weighed and price fixed at the cashregister. Intential manipulations can also occur. One can accordingly presume that certain articles which are not correctly scanned will be registered. For this purpose said steering of the conveyor is adapted.

It is important that the articles pass one by one. One can presume a certain co-operation from the customer but it can also occur that the articles are grouping under the transport. For this purpose, that means a formation of the articles in a line, the three transport sections 17-19 are arranged. By changing the direction of movement from the section 17-18 one gets in some favourable cases a formation in line of the particles. This is further accentuated at the change of movement at the passage from the section 18 to the bandscale 14. One can also give different speed to the three sections with in the direction of the transport increasing speed from section to section. The customer wishes usually to pick up the articles quickly, whereafter they are removed by the section 17 and the customer has then the tendency to put them close together. If now the section 18 runs quicker than 17, it means that the articles are departed and further distance between them is obtai- nable if the section runs even quicker. By forming a U- shape through the sections 17-19 one also gains that a sufficiently long transportation way for a good formation is obtained without extending the arrangement as a whole too much. The U-arrangement has also the advantage that the location of the cashier and the input place for the customer can be located straight opposite each other so that a communication can be maintained between the cashier and the customer while nevertheless maintaining a suffici¬ ently long transportation way for formation of the ar- tides.

Close to the end of the band section 19 one has arranged a labelling arrangement 30 which schematically is shown as a rectangle. This labelling arrangement can be of different kind but it comprises preferably an attachment device for the labels which are blown on the article which is trans¬ ported by. The arrangement comprises accordingly also a printing device for these labels and it gets the price information from the central computer in the store and from the scanners 13, 21 and 22.

The invention, the main object of which is automatically price labelling of the article bought, has been described above in connection with a special checkout desk. It is of course possible to arrange the labelling device 30 in connection with also other desk constructions which give the information which is necessary for the labelling.

One condition for the system having an arrangement accor- ding to the present invention to be problem free is that the price information to the customer is given in a satisfactory way so that the price labels, which now often are on the articles, not will be missed by the customer. It is therefore important that the shelf front labels are plain and preferably self-illuminating.

To get a problem free function of the labelling, it is as said above important that the articles have been oriented on the conveyor. This means that they shall have a certain distance from each other and that each article should be located at one edge of the conveyor, that means the edge that is closest to the labelling arrangement 30. This will occur automatically as the conveyor is oriented as shown in the figure, which means that they run in a ϋ-shape so that the articles always will be located in an inner curve, that means at the edge which is further most away from the cashier as seen in the figure.

The invention is not limited to the embodiment example shown, but it can be varied in different ways within the scope of the claims. It is for example possible to use the table scanner which is used in a common checkout desk. The cashier can in such a case move the article past the scanner and one can apply the label already at this moment.

Claims

Claims 1. Arrangement for price labelling of articles, c h a r a c t e r i z e d in that it comprises a checkout desk with for instance one or more conveyors (17, 18, 19) for carrying the articles and with scanners (13, 21, 22) for reading the identity of the article and one or more labelling devices (30) which are intended to automatically price label articles in dependence of information received from the scanners (13, 21, 22).

2. Arrangement according to claim 1, c h a r a c t - e r i z e d in that the labelling arrangement (30) comprises a printing device for labels.

3. Arrangement according to claim 1, c h a r a c t ¬ e r i z e d in that the labelling arrangement (30) comprises a printing device for direct printing of the price on the article.

4. Arrangement according to any of the claims 1 or 2, c h a r a c t e r i z e d in that the labelling device (30) comprises a device for applying labels on the ar¬ ticles.

5. Arrangement according to any of the claims 1 to 4, c h a r a ct e r i z e d in that the price information of the labelling arrangements (30) are intended to be supplied to these from a computer which is intended to be a receiver for the identity of the articles from the scanners (13, 21, 22) .

6. Arrangement according to any of the claims 1 to 5, c h a r a c t e r i z e d in that the checkout desk comprises a scale (14) intended to give information to the computer of the checkout desk of the weight of the weighing articles.