Pre-paid EIR Terminal Usage Model for Fleet Cost Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
The high capital expenditure required for purchasing and maintaining fleets of encoded information reading (EIR) terminals, such as bar code and RFID terminals, can be prohibitively expensive for businesses, and existing leasing models may not provide sufficient incentives for timely payments.
Innovation Solution
A pre-paid usage model for EIR terminals, where the terminal user purchases a predefined number of operations upfront, and a fleet management system processes payments and generates unlocking messages to enable or disable terminal functionality, ensuring only authorized operations are performed, with notifications for when additional operations are needed.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If businesses purchase EIR terminals through traditional capital expenditure models, then they gain full ownership and control of the terminals, but the upfront cost becomes prohibitively high
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-defining a specific number of EIR operations in advance and loading this counter into the terminal before deployment. This allows the terminal to operate immediately with pre-configured usage limits, eliminating the need for large upfront capital expenditure while ensuring terminal availability from day one.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the total usage rights into discrete, countable operations stored in a counter. Instead of selling the terminal as a single expensive asset, the system divides access into individual operation units that can be purchased and loaded incrementally, reducing the financial barrier to entry while maintaining full terminal functionality within the purchased limits.
2Quantity of substance
If existing leasing models are used for EIR terminals, then upfront costs are reduced, but incentives for timely payments are insufficient
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback by continuously monitoring the counter value and providing automatic notifications to users when the predefined number of operations is approaching exhaustion or fully depleted. This real-time feedback mechanism creates immediate awareness of usage status, motivating timely top-up payments to avoid operational interruptions, thereby improving payment compliance without requiring complex leasing contracts.
Solution Approach 2:
The system applies preliminary anti-action by disabling further EIR operations automatically when the counter reaches zero, preventing unauthorized or unpaid usage. This pre-established constraint ensures that only pre-paid operations can be executed, creating a strong financial incentive for timely payments while simplifying the business model compared to traditional leasing arrangements.
3Ease of operation
If EIR terminals allow unlimited operations without pre-payment, then user convenience is maximized, but businesses face uncontrolled operational costs
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies dynamics by making the terminal's operational capacity adjustable and renewable. The counter can be dynamically updated by loading new predefined numbers of operations through communication interfaces or physical media. This dynamic approach maintains ease of operation during the paid period while providing clear cost boundaries, allowing businesses to control operational expenses by purchasing only the number of operations they need.
Data Source
AI summary
A fleet management system for managing a fleet of encoded information reading (EIR) terminals can comprise one or more computers, a fleet management software module, and a payment processing software module in communication with the fleet management software module. The fleet management software module can be configured, responsive to receiving a customer initiated request, to generate an unlocking message upon processing a payment by the payment processing software module. The unlocking message can be provided by a bar code to be read by an EIR terminal, or by a bit stream to be transferred to an EIR terminal via network. Each EIR terminal can be configured to perform not more than a pre-defined number of EIR operations responsive to receiving the unlocking message.