Patent ID: 8170712

Claim:
A non-linear, unit-level sortation system, comprising: a control system; a conveyance mechanism; a plurality of conveyance receptacles, wherein each conveyance receptacle includes a receptacle identifier that uniquely identifies the conveyance receptacle within a materials handling facility of a retailer, and wherein the conveyance receptacles are not fixed to the conveyance mechanism; a singulation station, operable to: select single units of inventory items from a collection of inventory items, wherein the collection of inventory items includes units of heterogeneous items picked from inventory storage of the materials handling facility to fulfill a plurality of customer orders, wherein each of the plurality of customer orders indicates a purchase of one or more of the single units by one or more customers of the retailer; send, to the control system, data indicating an association of an item identifier of each selected unit with a receptacle identifier of a respective one of the plurality of conveyance receptacle, wherein each item identifier includes identification of the inventory item corresponding to the selected unit; and induct each conveyance receptacle containing a single unit into the conveyance mechanism; wherein one and only one unit is associated with each conveyance receptacle inducted into the conveyance mechanism.