Modularization of conveyor systems

Both the volatile market requirements of constantly growing e-commerce and the challenges of the Industry 4.0 movement create completely new technical requirements for modern distribution and demand unprecedented flexibility of processes and trades. The success or failure of an intralogistics project therefore depends not only on the quality of individual trades or individual implementations, but also crucially on the systematic and sustainable interaction of all trades. Intralogistics projects are highly interdisciplinary and require a high degree of cooperation from all companies involved in the implementation – from the planners to the IT specialists, the suppliers and the system operators.

The cornerstone for this interaction in modern logistics systems are therefore standardized functional components, which enable the smooth integration of different trades through cross-vendor harmonization. The modularization of conveyor systems shows the steps towards a standardized system architecture.

Modularization of conveyor systems for individual implementation

Every company and every industry has very specific requirements for the associated intralogistics. It is precisely this individuality that makes it impossible in principle to use standardized complete solutions for complex logistics processes. However, the advantages of standardized systems are obvious: the wheel does not have to be reinvented again and again, components and interfaces have already been extensively tested, and planning and implementation times are significantly shorter than those of an individual solution.

For over a year and a half, leading minds in the industry have been working together with associations and industry specialists to reconcile these two worlds. The solution to this discrepancy lies in segmented standardization. It is not the system as such that is standardized, but its functions, components and interfaces.

The result is the VDI/VDMA 5100 “SAIL” guideline (system architecture for intralogistics), which enables a significant reduction in complexity, both within the individual business processes and in the definition and linking of the interfaces between the various trades.

In summary, the steps can be defined as follows:

  1. Primary system decomposition according to conveyor functions
  2. Encapsulation of the functions found in components
  3. Standardization of the components
  4. Standardization of the component interfaces

Further information on SAIL can be found under SAIL – The advantages.

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