Get started with conveyors

Updated on 25 Mar 2024
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Garment Conveyors are machines that you can use to sort and store orders after cleaning. Automatic conveyors greatly increase efficiency by decreasing the manpower required to run larger-scale operations.

Overview

Conveyor Basics

There are two basic ways to classify a type of conveyor.

Automated Conveyor: The conveyor communicates with SPOT to track where the invoices and item are located and to be able to dispense them when required.

Help a dry cleaner assemble articles of clothing once they have been cleaned. These are simply called Assembly conveyors.
Store completed orders until pickup or delivery. These are called Storage conveyors.

Manual Conveyor: The user directs all movements with a control panel. These conveyors do not communicate with a point of sale system, such as SPOT. Because they do not communicate with SPOT, they are also outside our scope of our support.

Types of Automatic Conveyors

There are two main types of automatic conveyors that can assist with production.

Assembly conveyor: Users scan the barcode assigned to each completed item. The conveyor sorts the pieces into completed orders, moving so that when the user loads the item it is in the correct location. Optionally it may automatically wrap each completed order in a plastic bag (Bagger).

There are two optional types of assembly conveyors:

Print on load: This when SPOT prints an invoice when the items are loaded on the assembly conveyor. It is also often called Print Cache because the printed invoices are cached in files on the conveyor PC just after the order is detailed and stay there waiting for the conveyor to signal that the order is assembled.
Dynamic Splitting: The assembly conveyor, rather than SPOT, decides when to split items off from an invoice. Large orders are thus kept together through quick, detail, and production, and only become smaller orders at assembly. Typically they will not print invoices at detailing, but instead print at assembly.

Storage conveyor: Users scan fully assembled invoices. The conveyor stores them and then retrieves them when needed.

Optionally a storage conveyor may have a 24/7 kiosk attached:

Kiosk: Customers can pick up their completed orders by interacting with the kiosk, similar to an ATM.

How Conveyors Communicate with SPOT

SPOT and Automated conveyors communicate using a standard PC on which two programs have been installed:

SBS Conveyor Client (for SPOT), and the conveyor manufacturer's software (MAP, BAM, Quicksort, etc).

Each program writes files containing information or instructions for the other program to a data exchange path (which varies by conveyor type). Upon receiving a file, the program updates the information in its database, and then deletes the file, signaling readiness to receive more files with more information.