Patent ID: 7212877

Claim:
A method for automatically controlling a production process for the series production of order-specific products, the production process including a partial process, a sequence of orders in electronic form for the products produced in the production process, and a sequence of production objects running through the production process, the products being created by the production objects, a selection process selecting an order of the order sequence and a production object of the production object sequence that match one another, the selected production object being processed according to the selected order in the partial process, the selection process and processing being repeated until each order of the order sequence has run through the partial process, the method comprising: generating a copy of the order sequence; creating an initially empty electronic buffer memory for orders; in a selection process, whenever a first production object of the production object sequence and a first order of the copy do not match one another, removing the first order from the copy and storing the first order in the buffer memory; and in a further selection process, whenever a waiting time of at least one order in the buffer memory up to the selection process is greater than or equal to a prescribed waiting time limit, selecting the order with a greatest waiting time in the buffer memory and a matching production object from the production object sequence, removing the selected order from the buffer memory, and bringing forward the selected production object to a first place of the production object sequence.