the warehouse without a WCS operates “islands of
automation,” with each “system” working independently of each other. For example, without a WCS
installed, the conveyor system may decide the carton routing with no intelligence. The decision to
divert or not divert a carton to a specific zone will depend on using a “1” or “0” in the barcode.
Another approach is to load a routing table into the PLC. This is a fixed table and does not allow any
fl exibility. Both of these techniques are very basic and give little or no control.