We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve recently installed a new piece of infrastructure at our Northampton site, an Automated Parcel Sorter!
In this article
Why we’ve made this investment
This exciting new feature has been designed to significantly increase our throughput capacity, allowing us to process customer orders even faster.
Furthermore, the Sorter provides us with more flexibility when allocating our resources, and significantly increases our capacity to handle a higher volume of packages. This is going to be particularly useful when Peak season comes around.
How it works
Three conveyor belts were constructed to run through our packing areas. Once our Packers have finished preparing an order, they place it onto the belt running by their station.
To keep your parcels safe, we use a queuing system that kicks in if there’s a risk of too many parcels being placed onto the conveyor.
If the machine detects a surplus of parcels, it’ll temporarily cut the power of one or two conveyor belts to allow for a safe merge where the belts meet. This prevents orders from bumping into each other or being inaccurately sorted later down the line.
Right before sorting, our scanner automatically photographs, weighs, and measures each parcel to ensure that it’s eligible for your chosen carrier service. If everything checks out, your parcel will be sorted into one of several chutes, where it’ll wait patiently for dispatch.
If the scanner detects a problem, it’ll be directed to the end of the line. Here, it’ll be manually reviewed by one of our QA Team, who will quickly diagnose and resolve the issue.
This is only the beginning…
Our Automated Parcel Sorter is just the first phase in our ambitious Automation Roadmap. In the coming years, we’ll be investing millions into automation, robotics, and machine learning.
It’s an exciting time to be in the eCommerce space, and we’re committed to investing in the areas that will ensure James and James continues to be an innovative, competitive, and scalable fulfilment solution for our clients.
Stay tuned for more updates on our upcoming automation plans! Or, if you’re interested in learning more about our highly scalable fulfilment solutions, arrange a call with us.
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