Importance

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Abstract

An arranging section is provided to rearrange the order of articles received by a receiving portion into a specified order. When distributing and collecting a plurality of articles, that are being rearranged, among and in a plurality of upstream collecting branch portions, the operations of the arranging section are controlled such that the articles are classified into article groups of the same number of articles as the number of the last collecting branch portions, and such that, for each article group, elements of a subsequence representing the specified order assigned to a plurality of articles forming an article group are elements of a consecutive subsequence for the articles forming the article group, so that the articles in one article group are distributed and collected before the articles in any other article group. And when transporting the plurality of articles being rearranged, from the upstream collecting branch portions to the last collecting branch portions, the operations of the arranging section are controlled such that articles in an article group formed by the articles to which earlier positions in the specified order are assigned are distributed among the last collecting branch portions before articles in any other article group formed by articles to which later positions in the specified order are assigned, and such that the articles that form any one given article group are distributed among, and collected in, the last collecting branch portions, one by one in accordance with the specified order.

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First Claim