Hermes has installed a £1 million carousel system for bulky items at its hub in Rugby.
The semi-automated carousel system replaces a number of manual lines and is capable of processing up to 4,000 items per hour to over 60 destinations.
The system has two automatic infeeds, which are directly fed from boom conveyors, and two manual infeeds, all of which can handle bulky items up to 2m in length, 1.2m in width and weighing up to 50kg.
Each of the four infeeds onto the main carousel incorporate the latest scanning, volumetric and weighing technologies that identify and accurately profile the packages. Automatic checks are carried out on each parcel to ensure they have been correctly labelled before being transferred onto the carousel itself.
Chris Barrett, head of engineering, facilities and estates, said: “This is one of the first systems in the UK to incorporate an auto-scanning and profiling functionality onto a high-speed carousel system. Whether it is a curtain pole, ironing board or a set of golf clubs, the carousel is able to streamline the movement of all our bulky items, which will boost our productivity by over 30 per cent. It will also improve the visibility and tracking of parcels, which is an obvious benefit for our clients.”
The 270,000 sq ft hub opened in the summer of 2017 and initially increased the company’s overall parcel processing capacity by 45 per cent.
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