Token Management System:

               Any establishment in the pursuit of providing some service to the society cannot be having infinite resources to make the waiting time for getting served a zero. Hence there must be some kind of queue that has to be managed in a transparent & just full manner.

               Managing a queue becomes much more difficult when the time taken to serve cannot be predetermined due to various reasons. The least that the service seekers expect is to be served on First Come First Serve basis. To ensure this one of the methods that was traditionally followed was to handover recycled tokens to the patients walking in and make them meet concerned consultant on being called. This manual process is very tedious and prone to human errors, suspicion of tampering and communication problems among hospital staff. Such problems made it necessary to have automatic Token Management System in place.

       Following are the essential requirement of a Token Management System:

• Allow the service seekers themselves to generate next token in the queue along with date & time stamped.
• Allow for several token dispenser units to avoid cluttering of people at one place.
• Allow the service providers to view all the token issued for him at his table only.
• Allow the service provider to call token beholder either from waitlisted queue or from the list of persons called again.
• Communicate to the waiting people, the token no. being called both visually and aurally in vernacular language.
• Allow the service provider either to close the call or retain the call so that a person can be called again which will be very helpful for consultants like eye specialists.
• Have a provision to deploy more service providers with a common queue so that any service provider can call a token from the front end of this common queue.
• Have provision for various Queue Concepts.

               The token system designed, manufactured & supported by PROCESS CARE SYSTEMS addresses the requirements mentioned above along with many more features explained below

              The system usually consist of more than one calling unit and a display unit. Token Dispensers are employed to get the token printed and to register service request. All these units are connected to the central controlling unit called Token Hub  Token can have upto 8 services. A separate hot key will be there for each service.

The Token Management System developed by PROCESS CARE has following modules:

Token Dispenser Unit: used to get a Token printed & to register a token no. for a particular service.

Token calling unit: used to call a registered Token no..

Token Display Unit: used to display called token no., room no. of the service provider and announce the token no. in two languages predefined.

Token Hub: This is main module of the entire system which receives request from all the Token Dispenser Units and maintains one queue for every service. Likewise it can maintain upto maximum of 8 service queues. It can get connected to a maximum of 16 dispenser units & accepts service request from all of them.

Detailed description:

                The Token Dispenser Unit can have upto a max. of 8 feather touch keys catering to 8 different services and another key to confirm the selection of a service. The token generated can have a prefix letter to distinguish between different types of services. On any of the Token Calling Units requesting for a token to be called, the hub will determine from which queue it has to pickup the token & put that token on the Token Display Unit & announce the token no. in two different languages.

The token generated for different services will be put into respective logical queues.

             User can keep pressing different service keys and then press OK button. The dispenser unit chooses the service that was pressed just before OK button. Thus giving user a chance to correct himself if wrong service key was pressed. Ordinarily user presses required service key followed by OK key which makes the dispenser unit to print a Token and adds the request to the particular queue.

             The Token Calling Unit has two navigation keys 'PREV' & 'NEXT', one Call key, one 'RETAIN' key & a 'CLOSED' key. User can choose a token no. by browsing through the token queue using navigation keys and then press 'CALL' button. This action the hub to announce the token no. & show the token no. on seven segment (4" height) display along with the room no. of the service provider. After providing the service user can retain the service seeker or can close the call by pressing 'CLOSE' button. The seven segment LCD display within the module helps the user in identifying the tokens.

The Token Display Unit is designed with 3 digits for token and one digit for counter number along with voice module to announce both in English and a vernacular language.

All these modules are designed to be connected to a Token hub to make a star topology to increase the reliability.