Patent ID: 7941244

Claim:
A sortation system, comprising: a control system; and a stow and sortation station, wherein the stow and sortation station comprises a plurality of locations for stowing collections of items picked from inventory storage of a materials handling facility to fulfill a plurality of orders, wherein each collection is separately picked from the inventory storage and includes one or more units of items picked from the inventory storage to fulfill one or more of the plurality of orders, wherein at least one of the collections includes items picked for two or more different orders and at least one of the collections includes two or more heterogeneous items; wherein the control system is configured to: determine stowing of each of the collections of items to a respective location at the stow and sortation station; associate the units of items in the collections with the locations to which the collections are stowed; detect that all units of items for particular orders are stowed at the locations of the stow and sortation station; and direct picks for the particular orders at the stow and sortation station from the locations into order receptacles corresponding to the particular orders in response to said detection that all units of items for particular orders are stowed at the locations of the stow and sortation station.