The control and dispatch software delivered with the equipment: it takes tasks from the WMS, dispatches conveyors, cranes, AGVs and sorters, and reports results back; it connects to your existing WMS and ERP.
The control and dispatch software delivered with the equipment: it takes tasks from the WMS, dispatches conveyors, cranes, AGVs and sorters, and reports results back; it connects to your existing WMS and ERP.
A WCS (warehouse control system) sits between the WMS and the automated equipment. The WMS manages orders, waves and stock; the WCS handles tasks only: it breaks each WMS task into instructions the machines can execute, dispatches them by machine availability, route availability and priority, lets several machines relay one task, and reports the results back to the WMS. If a route is blocked it switches to another; after a fault or restart it first checks whether a machine is carrying a load, then resumes from where it stopped. We do not sell our own WMS: the WCS comes with the equipment and connects to the WMS and ERP you already have. At companies in China where our team members worked before, they handled WCS interfaces and monitoring for cross-belt sorting and conveyors in a footwear distribution centre, and WCS dispatch with an SAP interface for a die-storage AS/RS (projects of those companies, not delivered under the EMMANUEL name).
| Task dispatch | Takes WMS tasks and splits them into machine instructions; dispatches by machine state, route and priority; machines can relay a task |
|---|---|
| Routes and exceptions | Switches to another route if one is blocked; cancels tasks that cannot run and releases resources |
| Recovery | After a fault or restart, checks for a load on the machine and resumes from where it stopped |
| PLC link | Commonly TCP/IP socket with fixed-length packets: acknowledgement and retry on timeout, heartbeat, automatic reconnect; machine status can also run over OPC |
| WMS / ERP link | Database staging tables, web services, API, file exchange or SAP RFC, per project |
| Monitoring | Animated equipment view, fault markers, communication status, operation and job logs; with authorisation, start and stop machines, disable destinations or carriers |
| Statistics | Equipment utilisation, continuous running time, mean time between failures, exception rate and more |
Figures are typical configuration ranges; exact specifications are set per project.