Patent ID: 7242993

Claim:
An automated manufacturing system, comprising a computer processing system configured to define product packages and one or more product subbatches within each product package in response to input product information, to receive status information from one or more consolidation systems, and to produce consolidation assignment in response to the status information; and a plurality of consolidation systems each comprising: a batch storage system configured to store product subbatches for different product packages in accordance to the consolidation assignment; a consolidation controller configured to track the one or more product subbatches for a product package in the batch storage system, to produce the status information about the batch storage system, and to trigger the consolidation of the one or more product subbatches into the product package when all the product subbatches for the product package have been received by the consolidation system; and a package system configured to consolidate the one or more product subbatches into the product package.