ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 4 -- United States Patent no. 12,321,147, issued on June 3, was assigned to Siemens AG (Munich).

"Queue blocks for flexible automation engineering programs" was invented by Arquimedes Martinez Canedo (Plainsboro, N.J.) and Lingyun Wang (Princeton, N.J.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system for exchanging data in an automation environment is provided. The system includes at least one programmable logic controller (PLC A) containing program instructions executable by the at least one programmable logic controller and a queue block (50) configured to dynamically exchange data between the program instructions of the PLC and a data consumer (PLC C, PLC D)."

The patent was ...