ARTICLE REARRANGING DEVICE AND ARTICLE STORAGE FACILITY INCLUDING SAME

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