Patent ID: 8886356

Claim:
A method for operating a material handling system including a plurality of feed conveyors, comprising: configuring, by a computing device, each feed conveyor in the plurality of feed conveyors to operate in a slug-building merge mode; monitoring, by the computing device, to identify a first predefined condition; configuring, by the computing device, each feed conveyor in the plurality of feed conveyors to operate in a zippering merge mode in response to identifying the first predefined condition; monitoring, by the computing device, to identify a second predefined condition; and configuring, by the computing device, a first set of the feed conveyors in the plurality of feed conveyors to operate in the slug-building merge mode and a second set of the feed conveyors in the plurality of feed conveyors to simultaneously operate in the zippering merge mode in response to identifying the second predefined condition.