by or supplemented with an rfid tag reader magnetic strip reader or any other suitable device for automatically reading the respective identifiers a third embodiment of this disclosure which may be like the first and or second embodiments of this disclosure except for variations noted and variations that will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art is described in the following at the beginning of a production run or when manually requested the computerized management system 44 downloads to the computerized controller 46 the identity of filter elements 70 that are supposed to be used in the assembling equipment of the making and packaging system for that production run alternatively the computerized controller 46 may receive the identity of the filter elements 70 that are supposed to be used in a production run in any suitable manner such as manually by way of the upstream automated optical scanner 52 in the third embodiment the optical scanner 52 may be a hand held scanner and the other upstream automated optical scanner 54 may be omitted as mentioned above for each of the trays 36 its tray identifying label 58 may be mounted to the polymeric body of the tray and the filter identifying label 59 for the filter elements 70 within the tray may be mounted to the sword e g a removable portion of the tray such as a removable sidewall of the tray in the third embodiment the database 50 or a portion of the database has only twelve records and only twelve of the trays 36 may be loaded onto the receiving area 41 infeed conveyor belt of the unloader 40 different numbers of.