Patent ID: 7302306

Claim:
A method of determining when a specific article of manufacture was processed by a specific assembly station, the method comprising: receiving input in an assembly system that assembles articles of manufacture at a plurality of assembly regions and logs a time at which each article of manufacture enters or exits an assembly region, each assembly region comprising a plurality of sequential assembly stations, each assembly station being configured to process an article of manufacture, the received input identifying a specific article of manufacture; receiving additional input identifying one of the plurality of sequential assembly stations; determining an offset of the identified sequential assembly station relative to a first assembly station or to a last assembly station within a region that comprises the identified sequential assembly station; and determining a time at which a second sequentially processed article of manufacture entered or exited the region, wherein the identified specific article of manufacture and the second sequentially processed article of manufacture were separated in the assembly system by a number of articles of manufacture that corresponds to the offset.