Leap in parcel capacity for Hermes

OUR MAIN automation investment last year was the installation of a small item sorter at Nuneaton and another one at Winwick. It was a Beumer Tilt Tray Sorter, of the BS7 MTSorter type, which has a speed of 1,5 m/s and maximum parcel size 550mm x 400mm.

The machine was a £1.7m investment that has allowed Hermes 50% growth in the last 12 months.

The system has an operational capacity of 18,000 p/h, with 72 locations plus 4 rejects and incorporates the latest SICK camera technology.

In addition to the small item sorter, we have also upgraded 15 of our depots with the latest conveyor technology (our x-belt) and we plan to install a dedicated van belt at Warrington this year which will allow us to unload vans and provide an additional 100,000 parcel capacity per day at Warrington.

The rationale for the small item sorter investment was that we identified that the majority of the parcels that we processed were less than 550 x 450mm and that we could significantly increase our network capacity by purchasing two machines that were dedicated to processing these smaller items. The rationale for the Van belt was mainly to allow quicker unloading of the van traffic and to increase the capacity of the Warrington hub.

The small item sorter works by having parcels delivered to workstations via automated chutes that ensure an even distribution of parcels to the 20 operator stations and the operators then place parcels directly onto the small item sorter. SICK camera technology then scans the barcode and the parcel is then diverted into the correct destination. The 18,000 parcels per hour can be operated by as little as 20 operators, which if done manually would require at least double the resourcing, The small item sorter also has a barcode scanning read rate of 98% and the sort accuracy of 99.8%, so the machine offers very reliable sortation. The machine also travels in excess of 1.5m/s so a parcel is only on the sorter for as little as 25 seconds before it is sorted into its correct location.

We now have to organise the warehouses with precision in terms of the operational flows – the machines now operate at such high throughputs that the operation around the machine needs to be extremely well designed and efficient. Hermes has invested a significant amount of effort into ‘lean manufacturing’ which enables the operation to be arranged in the most optimal and effective way.

Chris Barrett, head of engineering and facilities, Hermes

For more information, visit www.myhermes.co.uk