Abstract: The transport system for transporting items such as carriers for wafers or wafers without carriers. Conveying devices transport the items between branching devices, which branch the items to different conveying devices and to processing devices, at which the items are processed, and to storage devices, wherein the items temporarily stored. Each item to be transported has an information medium, wherein at least one first destination address is stored. The item thus carries its own destination address and can be transported to a specific processing device that corresponds to the destination address. A first destination address is read at each inlet and outlet of the transport system (at the lifts in the example) at a processing device and a second destination address is written after the processing operation at the inlets and outlets. Each branching device uses an internal destination address list to define the branching direction in that the information medium of each item is read at each branching device.