Max Zehrt
Smart Products
Every day, millions of items are prepared for delivery in distribution centers. Checking for the right items and quantities can be time-consuming and prone to errors. This costs money and jeopardizes customer satisfaction. Choose our Smart Packing solution to reduce errors, eliminate inefficiencies, and increase productivity.
Customers expect to receive exactly what they ordered, in the quantity they ordered. Any failure to meet these expectations invites dissatisfaction and returns. To prevent such errors, companies scan every item before it ships. That takes time. In addition, not all products have a readable barcode, so their information must be entered by hand, which takes even more time. Quantities, in turn, are double-checked by weighing or counting. However, manual counting is susceptible to human error, so miscounts are common problems – as are product weight discrepancies. This presents a dilemma: How do you increase the efficiency of your logistics processes without compromising your efforts to prevent shipping errors?
ITK’s Smart Packing system is highly adaptable to the unique requirements of your logistics process. If you want to integrate reliable quality assurance into your packaging practices and speed up the workflow, Smart Packing is the solution for you.
The system uses a packing list code to identify the selected shipping items and displays the current packing list. To determine the exact type of item, the user simply passes items of the same type through a reading zone covered by multiple cameras. This capability is not limited to barcodes or QR codes. The system can read any text and extract all the information it needs via OCR (optical character recognition). It counts the number of items using a state-of-the-art 3D sensor. And it automatically updates the packing list as items are rearranged or removed.
The ROS (robot operating system) ensures stable communication between the sensors and logic components. The framework also facilitates real data collection for validation and further development. And that makes it so easy to quickly replicate and correct errors, and continuously improve system performance. The ROS also allows for modular integration of algorithms, sensors, etc. Adding sensors is just as easy as is replacing subsystems, which is why the system adapts so flexibly to your requirements.
In retrospect, we are very happy to have brought ITK Engineering on board. The experts at ITK Engineering very quickly anticipated where the development had potential for improvement, such as in reducing complexity. Using a partnership-based approach, they succeeded in tapping into these optimization opportunities in a structured and efficient manner in order to implement the desired functionalities. Thanks to their technical expertise, state-of-the-art system development was efficiently combined with image processing and AI, and the entire development is now characterized by a professional environment and precisely tailored tooling.
Ulrich Selinger, Supply Chain Projects, Robert Bosch GmbH
ITK’s Smart Packing system enables you to speed up the packaging process, reduce error rates by up to 80 percent, and double packaging productivity.
The system automatically detects errors to prevent the wrong items or wrong quantities from leaving your facility. It frees up your staff by taking over error-prone manual tasks to minimize the likelihood of mistakes. And it identifies items on the fly during the natural flow of packing, eliminating non-value-added activities that are often the source of inefficiencies. Users end up working more ergonomically. Smart Packing also reads, recognizes, and extracts relevant information to provide transparency and traceability with no additional effort.
