Abstract: A new laboratory automated system comprising a plurality of work cells coupled to a conveyor and a method for processing sample tubes are disclosed, both of which enable a system to maintain the maximum overall throughput regardless of the number and throughput of the individual work cells and regardless of the frequency at which sample tubes are loaded into the system. This is achieved by a sample buffer module coupled to the conveyor, the sample buffer module being in common to the plurality of work cells, and by a sample workflow manager configured to dispatch sample tubes from the sample buffer module to the work cells via the conveyor with a frequency for each work cell, which is equal to the sample processing throughput of each respective work cell.