Patent ID: 8245834

Claim:
A transport system, comprising: a transporter including a plurality of transport paths from a transport source to a transport destination for transporting a work via a transport path selected from the plurality of transport paths, said transporter including branch-point transport units which are arranged at branch points in the transport path for changing a transport direction of the work; a host computer which sets the transport path of the work from the plurality of transport paths; a controller for controlling said transporter; and a storage medium provided on the work, the storage medium containing transport path information; readers arranged at the branch points in the transport path for reading out transport path information from the storage medium provided on the work; and writers arranged at the branch points in the transport path and accessible to the storage medium; wherein said transport path information includes a transport direction of the work for each branch-point transport unit through which the work should pass, wherein when the work has arrived at one of the branch points, said controller refers to the transport path information read out by said reader at the one of the branch points and controls said branch-point transport unit at the one of the branch points to transport the work in the transport direction which is represented by the transport path information for the one of the branch points, the transport path information is stored in the storage medium at a storage address set in order of the branch-point transport units through which the work should pass, the storage medium stores a pointer to refer to the storage address, wherein the storage address corresponding to the branch-point transport unit through which the work should pass first is set as an initial value of the pointer, and the value is incremented every time the work passes through the branch-point transport unit by said writer at the branch point through which the work passes.