Defining the Racking and Stacker Cranes

The specification of the racking and stacker cranes is accomplished in the five steps illustrated below (from the MS-DOS version of the “Movement Controller”):

Screen dump from DOS version of
Movement Controller, showing the
steps involved in specifying the numbers of cranes and the layout of the
racking, converted to a “gif” file, thereby losing some
of the colour definition

The first step is to erase any previous crane and rack definition.

The next step is to enter the number of cranes.

The third step is to enter the definitions of the crane racking. This allows you to set individual cranes as non-existent, set the number of long travel and hoist level stops.

The fourth and fifth steps are designed to tie the racking logically to the conveyor system. In the fourth step, you need to enter the correlation between the crane racking outfeed positions and the conveyors servicing these positions, while in the fifth step, you will need to enter the correlation between the crane racking infeed positions and the conveyors servicing these positions.

At this stage, you should also enter names for the other destinations of the conveyor system. Each conveyor destination has an associated number, which has been used in the conveyor system definition. This number should be also entered here.