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Very messy and painful.
That was actually my first version, believe it or not. The issue is that if a factory further down the line needs the same item, the item won't reach, as it's being picked up before. I eventually changed it so the last factory just picks up any leftovers. As it still caused congestion, I just gave up and went with the loopback
I just tried this, due to the splitter having an input filter it blocks the main belt if the splitted belt is stopped. But using 2 splitters works, so I've got my solution :)
Lag, or lead time is always a problem for 'just in time' inventory systems. Factorio is no exception to that. Depending on how much the system works - as in if it's a mall and only makes things once in a while to replace construction, or if it's the "production" system for science and works full-time full-speed - you might want to figure out the delay from the source to the receiver - for each receiver and each item - and set a buffer to cover that delay so the machine can start to fulfill it's production requests and have enough of a buffer, just enough, to keep working until the requested inputs arrive on the belt. Just another constant combi at each machine. No big deal, right?
Splitter filters and belt blockage solution: For a completely different purpose, and one very prone to backups, I developed a triple-splitter arrangement which filters off the belt yet won't block unless the entire loop is saturated, in which case it's effectively blocked anyway.
For this I'll use a belt moving left to right and the take of moving to the south. Splitter #1 has the input belt on the bottom and is set to filter the item on the bottom output. The top output going to a bypass belt and the bottom output going to another splitter, offset 1 tile south of the first. Splitter #2 has output priority set to the lower output. The lower output goes to where I want the item (the hold zone in your case). The upper output connects directly to a third splitter. Splitter #3 is set even with splitter #1, has priority input set to the bottom and is filtered to not output on the top output. (Deconstruction planners are read and look like a good "stop" symbol when used as a filter on splitters.) The bottom output of splitter #3 is the continuation of the belt's progress. Because of the blocking filter on splitter #3 it is possible to place splitter #1 of the next item directly after it without any belts needed, giving a 3-tile wide take-off, which happens to nicely match the size of an assembler.
The problem I would see with such a filtered splitter arrangement is that the filter cannot be set by circuit (yet) and some assemblers are going to need several inputs, and you'd need a filter setup for each of them. Satellites are one of the nasty things, only needing six inputs, and most in massive quantities!
Belt as buffer: If you added a 2-tile space between splitter #2 and #3 you could connect the upper output of #2 to the upper output of the new #4 and the lower output of #2 to the lower output of #4. Wire the lower belt from #2 to #4 and enable/disable as needed to trap up to 8 items on the belt segment when the item is requested. The priority output will fill the buffer first yet allow the excess to flow down stream to fill other requests. Trigger the inserter to only swing when the buffer is either full, or at the needed quantity and then unblock the belt once the inserter has picked up as much as has been requested. A longer belt, even a dropped loop, could be used for places with massive needs. Each straight belt can hold 4 per lane and each curve can hold 4 on the outer lane and 3 on the inner lane. Since to make a loop work you'll need left and right curves in pairs you can consider each pair of curves as 7 per lane or 14 total for each pair of curved belts.
In regards to the buffer: Solving this problem was key to making the whole build possible. I put chests at each input and output of the belt to have some storage. After that, I've figured out a way to have a signal going to the network when the input chest drops below x, then keeps the signal up until the chest is filled up to y, stops the signal, and then waits until the chest is below x again.
Given that figuring this out is pretty much 90% of making this build work out, I believe this would be something to figure out for oneself. In case you don't wish to do so and just want to get rolling right out of the box, I'll gladly throw some blueprints at you :)
As a hint: there's 4 steps in there that each have their own logic and follow one after the other. It's a loop with 4 steps, at each step something needs to be checked. You don't need mods to do it, but you have to think outside the box :)
Good luck and I'm glad I've caught your attention with this madness of mine! :3
If/when I do a mono-belt challenge I'm most likely going to keep the lanes distinct. Which lane something travels in will always be the same, and only one. It does reduce the belt buffer to half, which I can fix with a longer belt if I use that, but it also enables easy underground hood trapping if I know that iron plates are always on the left lane, for example. Lastly, even though the belt shouldn't clog unless it's fully saturated, I can reduce that to only affect one lane and plan the lane usage around the likelihood of a clog and help keep commonly paired items in different lanes just to help increase production throughput.
Yes, it does sound like a fun challenge.