Cabinet PLC

SCADAmanagement

It’s hard to talk about warehouse automation and not bring up the subject of programmable logic controllers, or PLCs, as they are known. PLCs are used in automation to control the movements of the actual machine. The programmable logic, “as it’s named,” does, in fact, “control” the actual piece of equipment. This function happens even with a small hybrid facility with just one or two pieces of equipment up to a large-scale, fully automated operation. Furthermore, there must be one PLC controller for each piece of equipment. This reason is why it seems complex to automate a warehouse or intralogistics process. So, imagine an entire warehouse full of equipment, and each piece with a PLC telling it what to do. So, the PLC has several components that work together to enable machine movement. These are: The central processing unit, or CPU, is basically the brains of the PLC. It is responsible for program execution, decision-making, communication to the WCS, and memory management. A power supply converts the electrical distribution voltage to a single-level voltage utilized by the PLC processor or other modules. Input and output messaging are bits of analog and digital modules between the PLC and field devices such as valves, transmitters, etc. Communication connectivity happens via a digital data transfer between the PLC and other systems in the facility. An excellent example is the integration between the PLC and the WCS. The WCS sends a communication message down to the PLC with a command. From there, the PLC carries out the command and sends back a communication message telling the WCS that the command was done.