At the end of 1990, the number of installed vending machines first exceeded 5.4 million and the annual sales amounted to 5.8 trillion yen.
Improvements required of vending machines are
(1) Sales increase, (2) improvement in serviceability, (3) improvement in sales efficiency, (4) variety and extension, (5) harmony with environment.
This paper describes how Fuji vending machines meet these requirements.

Easy access called originally by Fuji Electric means a new user-friendly mechanism that enables consumers to finish a series of buying motions such as selecting an article, throwing in coins, taking out the article, and taking out the change in naturally standing position.Conventional types with a takeout opening at the lower part seem to make consumers bow when handling over an article. This vendor series has all of the article selector buttons, slit, takeout opening, and change port at the front center easy of access and consumers need not stoop to take out articles and the change.

What the recent market required of can vendors are to meet the continuous diversification of sales articles, to make design more attractive, and to improve serviceability to cope with labor shortage. To satisfy these requirements, Fuji Electric has developed a new fourfold and fivehold serpentine racks, a new bendmech, a bright and wide design, and a four-chamber construction, resulting in a new series of Fuji canned-beverage vendors.This paper introduces an outline of the features of the new series and of the construction mainly of the serpentine racks and bendmech.

Strongly desired of cup combination vendors were many functions to meet diversified beverages and taste-oriented trends and improvements in route efficiency to meet route work increase and labor shortage. Fuji Electric, therefore, has developed a new series to satisfy the market needs.
This serviceable series can offer more tasty beverages, by the following: (1) reduction in route work time such as material supply and cleaning, (2) sanitary improvements such as internal construction against dirt and automatic cleaning, (3) easier takeout, (4) more attraction to consumers, and (5) improved beverage characteristics.

Though market environment becomes severe as shown by tightened control on TV advertisements for cigarettes and difficulty in securing locations for the vendors, new tobacco products are developed actively. About 40% of the total tobacco sales is sold through vendors, so that vendors are playing an important part in business strategy for tobacco companies and sales shops.
To cope with such market situation, Fuji Electric has developed a new series aiming at vendors more attractive and easier to handle. This paper introduces its features, specification and construction.

Frozen foods, being backed by the simplification, diversification, and gourmet-oriented trend of eating habits and the spread of microwave ovens, have rapidly come into wide use. In addition, the merit of being keepable for a long time is suitable for vendors.Fuji Electric developed frozen-food vendors as a start to enter the frozen-food industry newly. This paper gives an outline of their features, specifications, and constructions.

Fuji Electric has studied fuzzy application to vendors for several years, and one of the fruits is cup combination vendors that can control chlorine concentration stably.In the maintenance of sanitary conditions bychlorination, the stable control of chlorine concentration is an important problem for the improvement of taste.However, it was so difficult to analyze the factors of chlorine concentration variation that enough control could not be realized in the conventional vendors. We have completed a chlorine generator (optional) for stable concentration control which presumes the influence of variation

The control units of vendors have mostly come to have a distributed control system with a microcomputer to meet many functions. When a fault happened in such a complicated control unit, it took much time to locate the fault. Fuji Electric applied expert system to fault diagnosis and has completed a fault diagnosis system that can run on a personal computer. Its major feature is that it can form a judgment on 10 faults in control boxes and switches from 17 observations inputted in reply to a questionaire about the conditions of a vendor.

Vendors have become indispensable for users such as beverage manufacturers and operators as an effective sales means recently. The accountability system for vendors (ACS) are used for operating these vendors efficiently.Fuji Electric has developed various ACSs. This paper introduces the line-up of systems and an online ACS as the latest example.

In what has been called information society or card society recently, various card systems are put to practical use. Fuji Electric has tackled all business chances concerning card system with gradual sales results.This paper introduces the present status of our business, the card systems classified by fields, and the developments of components for the systems.

As vendors came into wide use, function enhancement, diversification, and recently, improvement in serviceability have been required of coin mechanisms and bill validators installed in them.
This paper introduces the following Fuji Electric's developments: "coin mechanisms with a function of checking the change" that improve the efficiency of change withdrawal by operators, "change lifters" that enable consumers to take out the change easily, and "thin-type bill validators" that are thin and make up-side-down installation possible leading to increase in the degree of freedom of vendor design.