ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,504,745, issued on Dec. 23, was assigned to TOYOTA JIDOSHA K.K. (Toyota, Japan).

"Control device, system, and adjustment method" was invented by Chikage Kubo (Chofu, Japan), Kenichi Yamada (Nissin, Japan), Yuki Tatsumoto (Seto, Japan), Hiromitsu Fujii (Kariya, Japan) and Mitsuhiro Naito (Okazaki, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A control device includes a control unit configured to acquire target data indicating a production target in a factory and detect production progress in the factory, compare the production target indicated by the acquired target data with the detected production progress, and predict, based on an obtained com...