Automated manufacturing facility and methods

A manufacturing system (20) comprising:

• one or more stores (84;
• 80A-80C;
• 92) for raw materials, work-in-progress (WIP), and finished goods;
• a plurality of manufacturing cells (40A-40F), each cell including:
• one or more machines (42A-42C) for manufacturing an assembly;
• and
• a programmable logic controller (PLC) (44) for controlling the machines;
• one or more devices (60, 70) for moving raw material, WIP, and finished goods;
• and
• one or more servers (32) for:
• communicating with the PLCs and the devices, wherein the one or more servers further have programming for:
• instructing (642) the plurality of manufacturing cells to assemble finished goods from the raw materials;
• instructing (628, 632) the one or more devices to move said raw materials and finished goods;
• and
• just in sequence (JIS) skipped assembly recovery steps (730) for the manufacturing cells and devices,
• wherein the just in sequence (JIS) skipped assembly recovery steps comprise:
• instructing (728, 730) a manufacturing cell to skip manufacture of an assembly in a sequence of assemblies while manufacturing remaining assemblies in the sequence;
• instructing (728, 730) the loading of a shipping container with the remaining assemblies while leaving vacant a designated space in the container;
• and
• instructing (728, 730) one of the devices to take the shipping container with vacant space to a WIP store.