Patent ID: 7558742

Claim:
A customer self-checkout system for processing items for purchase, comprising: a checkout station configured for self-checkout by customers of items for purchase; a plurality of supervisory terminals comprising stored program instructions that configure the plurality of supervisory terminals to conduct supervisory activities administering operation of the checkout station; and a controller operatively coupling the plurality of supervisory terminals to the checkout station, wherein said controller comprises stored program instructions that configure the controller to enable communication of requests from a checkout station to multiple ones of a plurality of supervisory terminals by sending signals from said controller to one or a multiplicity of said plurality of supervisory terminals, to enable supervisory activity administration of the checkout station by multiple ones of the plurality of supervisory terminals and to enable an arbitration function to determine which supervisory terminals of said one or a multiplicity of said plurality of supervisory terminals conducts supervisory activities on said checkout station wherein the supervisory activities comprise a plurality of supervisory functions that administer operation of the checkout station; a first one of the supervisory terminals conduct supervisory activities consisting of a first subset of the supervisory functions; a second one of the supervisory terminals conduct supervisory activities consisting of a second subset of the supervisory functions; and, the first and second subsets of the supervisory functions are different and the arbitration function selects the supervisory terminal to perform the supervisory activity based on the subset into which the requested supervisory activity falls.