Glossary · System coordination, integration and orchestration
Transfer condition
Also known as: Handover condition
German: Übergabebedingung
In industrial automation, a transfer condition is the set of conditions that must be fulfilled before a workpiece, material, product or control responsibility is handed over from one machine, station or unit to another, such as both sides ready, positions reached and the target free.
- System integration
In one sentence
A transfer condition is the set of conditions that must be met before material or responsibility is handed from one machine or unit to another.
Example
The transfer condition for moving a batch from the mixer to the storage tank requires the mixing step finished, the tank empty and clean, and the transfer valves in the correct positions.
How it applies
- Engineering: Specify transfer conditions completely for both sides. In SFC programming, they often appear as transition conditions; in ISA-88 batch control, as conditions for phase-to-phase transfers.
- Commissioning: Test that a transfer never starts when a single condition is missing, and that the transfer stops in a defined way if a condition is lost during the transfer.
- Maintenance: Diagnostics should show which transfer condition is not met, since this is a frequent reason for a stopped line.
- Documentation: List transfer conditions in the functional or interface specification and in troubleshooting tables of the manual, using the same names as the HMI.
Transfer condition vs. transfer sequence
A transfer condition is the precondition that permits the handover. A Transfer sequence is the series of steps that carries it out. Each step of a transfer sequence may have its own conditions.