Patent ID: 7100826

Claim:
A system for performing inventory control, comprising: one or more inventories adapted to store at least one of wafers, unpackaged circuits and packaged circuits, where the wafers are suitable for processing into integrated circuits, and where at least one of the wafers, the unpackaged circuits and the packaged circuits are marked with one or more barcodes; one or more barcode readers operable to read three or more barcodes, at least one of a third barcodes coupled to the integrated circuits and encodes information sufficient to identify the wafers from which the integrated circuits were fabricated by relating the third barcodes coupled to the integrated circuits to at least one of a first barcode, the wafer information stored in a data store, one or more second barcodes and fabrication information stored in the data store, the third barcodes further encoding packaging information related to packaging of the integrated circuits; and one or more sorters adapted to route at least one of wafers, unpackaged circuits and packaged circuits to one or more inventories based, at least in part, on information encoded by the two or more barcodes.