Patent ID: 8812147

Claim:
A system for fulfilling orders from an inventory comprising serialized products, the system comprising: a plurality of robot-accessible bins; a robot programmed to load product units to the plurality of robot-accessible bins and retrieve product units from the plurality of robot-accessible bins, wherein each of the plurality of robot-accessible bins comprises no more than one serialized product unit, and wherein each serialized product unit is identified by a serial identifier unique to the serialized product unit; a plurality of non-reserved product bins containing non-reserved product units; and a computer system comprising at least one processor and operatively associated electronic storage comprising instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the computer system to: receive an order; derive from the order a plurality of products, a unit quantity for each of the plurality of products, and a first serial identifier referencing a first serialized product unit of at least one of the plurality of products, and wherein at least one of the plurality of products is a non-reserved product; receive an indication that the first serialized product unit has been confirmed; determine a first bin selected from the plurality of non-reserved product bins that is associated with product units of the non-reserved product; generate a pick instruction, wherein the pick instruction specifies the first bin and the unit quantity of the non-reserved product specified by the order; determine a first robot-accessible bin selected from the plurality of robot-accessible bins that comprises the first serialized product unit; and instruct the robot to retrieve the first serialized product unit from the first robot-accessible bin.