Sorting out the sorting process
Three major Austrian players have joined forces to tackle the issue of variable packaging in delivery services and, after innovative physical simulations, have designed a solution for both within and outside the logistics industry.
The Institute for Technical Logistics at the TU Graz have worked with Austrian Postal Services and Körber to solve the problem of “polybags”. These packets, mostly coming from the Middle East, pose an obstacle to delivery services, as their irregular shapes disturb automatic sorting.
Factoring in shape and content, the newly innovated system allows consignments to be accurately recognised, tracked, and sorted. It makes the sorting process of irregularly shaped deliveries much more reliable than previously. Not only is this useful for polybags, but it can also be applied to packages with loose content such as bulk or piece loads. (mk)