The role of PC based control and open architecture in incremental upgrades
STORAGE, HANDLING & DISTRIBUTION UPGRADE WITHOUT DOWNTIME
BECKHOFF AUTOMATION UK
The role of PC based control and open architecture in incremental upgrades
Anyone who has tried to renovate a kitchen knows the challenge of improving something essential without completely losing the ability to use it. For warehouse operators, the principle is similar, but the stakes are much higher. As intralogistics operations grow, the challenge is often not whether to add more automation, but how to do it without bringing the whole site to a halt. Here, Mark Richards, UK sales manager at Beckhoff Automation UK, explains how intralogistics operations can scale in phases, rather than rebuilding everything from scratch.
In intralogistics, growth rarely happens on a blank sheet of paper. More often, operators need to add conveyor sections, sortation functions, picking zones or handling equipment around systems that are already running every day. That makes scaling a control challenge as much as a mechanical one.
Brownfield sites are rarely tidy. Existing equipment may come from different generations and different suppliers, with interfaces that have evolved over time. Documentation may be incomplete, while a change in one area can have unexpected effects elsewhere. The question is not simply whether to add more automation, but how to integrate it without creating unnecessary risk. For warehouse operators, the challenge is how to increase throughput and flexibility without stopping the operation that already exists.
Planning phased growth
Legacy infrastructure can make new technology difficult to implement cost-effectively, especially without significant downtime to existing manufacturing schedules. This problem is widespread in manufacturing, but the principle applies just as strongly in warehousing, where downtime quickly affects throughput, service levels and customer expectations.
Rather than treating expansion as one large cutover, operators can reduce risk by dividing projects into manageable phases. A new conveyor zone, picking cell or interface can be integrated, tested and commissioned while the rest of the site continues to run. This makes problems easier to isolate and avoids turning the whole upgrade into a single high-pressure event.
For that approach to work, planning is critical. Clear interfaces need to be defined between old and new systems. Operators need to know which controller owns which part of the process, what data needs to pass between systems and what should happen if communication is lost. Without that clarity, issues tend to appear when downtime is least acceptable.
Testing is just as important. In a live warehouse, new sections need to be tested thoroughly before they are brought into service, particularly where old and new systems have to exchange data. Phased cutovers should also include a practical fallback plan if something does not behave as expected.
This is also where PC-based control and distributed control architectures can help. PC-based control provides a flexible platform for integrating logic, motion, visualisation and communication. PC-based control can help because it is modular and adaptable. You can add functions, interfaces or control tasks more incrementally, instead of treating the whole system like one fixed block that has to be replaced all at once.
94 PECM Issue 80