Automatic Shipping Systems
In these challenging economics it is important to realize there is a fixed cost associated to labor with many tasks including packing and shipping operations. Even if you normally ship out 5,000 cartons per day and now only ship 3,000 per day, the cost to do so is fairly static; or for argument sake maybe 1 less person.
The traditional business model includes perhaps a printed pick ticket, workers picking orders, then packing, scanning the order to produce a shipping label, weight, etc.
An automatic shipping system cuts out the touch labor associated with scanning, peeling/sticking shipping label, QC, etc. The process in a simple and low cost form is as follows:
- The packed carton is placed on a conveyor with some sort of order ID (or license plate label)
- The order ID is automatically scanned by a fixed position scanner
- Carton weight is recorded by the inline scale (and dimensioned where required)
- The order is looked up in the database, weight/dim recorded
- Shipping label produced and automatically applied to the carton
- Verification scan from fixed position scanner against shipping label on correct carton
- Options for exceptions such as automatic reject for no-read, order not found, etc.
This type of system typically produces a 6 month to 1 year ROI depending on a few factors such as number of employees, number of cartons per day, etc.
We find that companies shipping at least 800 items per day have a very compelling business reason to automate this process. Click the links for more information on
