ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,225,983, issued on Feb. 18, was assigned to NIKE Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.).
"Agile manufacturing processes and systems" was invented by Daniel B. DeHaven (Sherwood, Ore.) and Bruce J. Kilgore (Lake Oswego, Ore.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A manufacturing process involving a series of discrete operations can be modified by adding, removing, or reordering operations, without design changes to the equipment. The manufacturing process uses a frame comprising one or more alignment tabs. Each alignment tab comprises an alignment element. The alignment element interacts with a corresponding alignment element at a manufacturing station to identi...