no contamination or damage to the articles during the transfer to the needed tools the carrier boxes can be designed for operator handling or for oht handling the output buffer is preferably stored the articles to be needed next and more preferably stored an adequate number of articles for a predetermined period so that the operation of the fabrication facility is not stopped or inconvenient during a general failure the output buffer can comprise individual compartments to store carrier boxes the carrier boxes can contain a single article or a plurality of articles to be transported the output buffer can be generally associated with io loaders so that in the normal course of process fabrication flow the output buffer can provide articles to the io loaders to be transferred to the process equipment needing the articles in certain situations the output buffer can be considered as an extension of the io loaders to increase the number of to loaders to reduce waiting time the output buffer can be much smaller than the io loader thus a combination of output buffer and io loader can provide a larger number of io ports for a smaller volume the output buffer and the io.