Fixed conveyor and sortation are not being retired

On 2 October 2026, Modern Materials Handling looked at whether robotics had made fixed conveyor and sortation obsolete. The reporting says the opposite is happening in high-volume buildings: goods-to-person systems and autonomous robots are being tied into conveyor and sortation, because the fixed equipment is still the high-speed path between processes.

John Mart, vice president of product management at Dematic, is quoted on the demand for high-speed sliding-shoe sorters in larger facilities. The same article covers Fives’ GENI-Flex approach to irregular parcels and Wynright’s AS-35 shoe sorter, extended to polybags, totes, and larger cartons.

For a maintenance group, the practical point is the mix. A zone may now include a shoe sorter, a merge, a photoeye, and a robot interface. The stopped carton is still a symptom. The next question still has to separate a device fault from a mechanical condition.