The use of programmable counters in the state assignment of finite state machines is discussed. A systematic method is presented for maximising the use of such a counter and for minimising accordingly the storage of next state codes.
Davio, M., & Ciesielski, M. (1991). State Assignment Using Programmable Counters. Electronics Letters, 27(1), 9-10. https://doi.org/10.1049/el:19910006 (Original work published 1991)