Glossary · Packaging and intralogistics
Conveyor control
Also known as: Material flow control (conveyors)
German: Fördertechniksteuerung
In intralogistics, conveyor control is the control system, usually PLC-based, that drives conveyor motors, reads sensors and scanners, manages zones, merges and diverts, and exchanges transport orders with higher-level systems.
- Intralogistics
In one sentence
Conveyor control is the PLC-based control that drives conveyors, reads sensors and executes routing decisions from higher-level systems.
Example
The conveyor control reads the barcode at the scanner, asks the WCS for the destination and triggers the diverter to lane 4.
How it applies
- Engineering: Conveyor control handles the real-time level: motor start and stop, accumulation logic, tracking of each item between sensors and the timing of diverters. It receives destinations from the Warehouse control system (WCS) and reports events back.
- Commissioning: Tracking and diverting depend on timing. Scanner-to-diverter distances, conveyor speed and communication Latency must fit together, or items end up on the wrong lane.
- Safety: Emergency stop zones, restart after a stop and automatic starts of zones belong to the control concept and the risk assessment.
- Documentation: Document the zone layout with sensor and motor IDs matching the electrical drawings and the HMI, the interface to the WCS (messages, timeouts, fault handling) and the restart behavior after a stop.
Conveyor control vs. warehouse control system
Conveyor control executes; the WCS decides. The boundary between them should be defined in an interface specification.