Trend towards parcel OCR gathers pace
Éthe key to maximising automation in a changing market
Sorting centers are constantly seeking ways to increase their automation rate in order to reduce costs of manual handling, reduce processing time, increase accuracy and maximize their investment in automation. This can be a significant challenge for parcels and flats where traditional solutions have relied on high levels of EDI and enforcing strict bar-coding standards with clients.
 The trend in the market is quite the opposite, according to Prime Vision CEO Eddy Thans. "Gaining new volume in today's liberalized markets is all about eliminating these barriers to entry and making it as easy as possible to do business with you".
Many organizations have already responded positively to this challenge and are seeing significant growth as a result. We need to be thinking beyond the barcode, says Eddy: adding that at least every item has an address label! "In that respect, parcels and flats automation is becoming more and more like the letter identification solution". That trend is evident by the more than twenty parcel sorting centers worldwide that have already implemented the ParcelVision open recognition platform from Prime Vision, allowing automated identification based on hand-written labels, machine-printed labels, barcodes and more.
Post Danmark were an early-adopter of the new system and were a delight to work with for Prime Vision, implementing the complete system in less than ten weeks prior to the Christmas peak. Svend-Erik Rordal, Process Consultant at Post Danmark comments "Only around a third of our parcels come with EDI so the need for us to improve our ability to read hand-written labels automatically was self-evident."
TNT Parcel Service this year implemented ParcelVision at its sorting centers across The Netherlands. According to Gabby van der Arend, Project Manager at TNT, manual data entry is where TNT also had its greatest bottleneck as non-EDI parcels had to be keyed prior to induction onto the sorter. ParcelVision has enabled TNT to increase productivity and reduce manual handling, an investment that will deliver an aggressive return on investment.
Prime Vision B.V.
www.primevision.com
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