ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,547,976, issued on Feb. 10, was assigned to Amazon Technologies Inc. (Seattle).

"Resource utilization based-modeling" was invented by Sourabh Puri (Bellevue, Wash.), Jennifer Cowles (Mt. Juliet, Tenn.), Yimin Liu (Bellevue, Wash.), Gunjan Gupta (Noida, India), Nitin Birdi (Nabha, India), Suvam Biswal (Cuttack, India) and Kira Faith Jones (Nashville, Tenn.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Improved resource utilization based-modeling is described herein. In an example, a computer system receives layout data indicating a layout of storage areas, staging areas, and material handling equipment configured to move items to at least the storage ar...