Patent ID: 7987947

Claim:
An elevator system serving a plurality of floors of a building, comprising: one or more hoistways; at least two elevator cars traveling in said one or more hoistways; a call entry panel on each of said floors, each all entry panel having a call entry feature with which prospective passengers can enter a desired destination floor thereby registering a call for service to said desired destination floor; said call entry panels each having a display for identifying each registered call, by displaying a selected one of a plurality of call identifiers that are distinct from an identifier of the desired destination; a controller configured to be responsive to the registering of each call for instantly causing the corresponding one of said call entry panels to display the selected call identifier which uniquely identifies either (a) just the corresponding call or (b) a plurality of calls entered on the same floor and to be answered simultaneously by the same one of said elevator cars; said controller being configured to assign each unanswered registered call to one of said elevator cars as determined by initial conditions in said system in compliance with an assignment strategy at the time of registering said corresponding call, and to successively reassign each registered call to successive ones of said cars under conditions in said system subsequent to said initial conditions when required to comply with said strategy; a sign adjacent each of said one or more hoistways on each of said floors, each of said signs operable to display any selected call identifier of a call assigned to the elevator in the corresponding hoistway; and said controller being configured to cause the selected call identifier corresponding to one of said calls to be displayed on the one of said signs on the departure floor of said one call adjacent to the hoistway in which the car currently assigned to said one call is running as the elevator car that is currently assigned to said one call approaches said departure floor to receive passengers in response to said one call.