1. Hybrid Merchandising- Point of Sale Application

2. Purpose the Project l Empower small businesses to maximize profits. l Enable small businesses to compete technologically with larger, well funded organizations. l Promote competition.

3. Scope of the Project l Design an application that can track the following: Stock-On-Hand (SOH). Buying Trends. Sales (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, etc.).

4. Stock-On-Hand Functionality l Monitor and track the inventory on hand for all items within the store.

5. Stock-On-Hand Business Rule If an item fall below a threshold, mark that item for re-order. If an item is over-stocked, suspend re-order and possibly discount the item. If an item is being discontinued, mark the item as a clearance item.

6. Buying Trend Functionality What items are being bought in combination with one another. Monitor when the item is bought (time of day, day of week, etc.).

7. Buying Trend Business Rule l An item or group of items need to be purchased during a specific period of time (time / day combination).

8. Sales Functionality Monitor which items are being sold. At what price are consumers willing to buy the item. Track the sales history of a particular item for forecasting.

9. Sales Business Rule l An item has to be sold to a consumer (i.e. not stolen or sent back to the supplier).

10. Future Enhancements l Product-Location Tracking - the ability to track what items are being sold in relation to where they are within the store. l Seasonal-Trend Tracking - monitor items that are being sold most frequently during a particular season.

11. Project Design Inference Engine (Agent) Knowledge Base Cloudscape Database DOS Command Prompt

12. Development Tools l Java Programming Language. l NARL development tool to represent a semantic model of the data-base. l NARL Rule Manager to build rules for SOH, Buying Trend, and Sales tracking. l Cloudscape Data-Base (partially based on the National Retail Foundation Model (NRF)).

13. Current Status l Already have the data-base and data scripts to populate the tables. l Looking into the JdbcMetadataMgr to get at the data-base. l Looking into the NarlRuleMgr class to setup the rules needed. l Overall, there is plenty of work to do, but I’m confident in completion of the project.