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Automation Brings results

“What we have is a ‘paperless warehouse’ in which everything is automated, from the creation of picking lists to manifesting, weighing, label printing, application, package sorting and staging, ” says Sawyer. “In fact, paper isn’t used in the shipping system at all until the last box of each shipment is processed. At that point, the system prints out a packing slip with a complete list of items, including their serial and tracking numbers.”

According to Sawyer, the old shipping operation ran 24 hours a day just to keep up with demand. Today, he said, Bay Networks processes its daily shipping requirements in only 16 hours, at a rate of 15 to 18 boxes per minute. This, he said, is with the system operating at "medium" speed. At “high” speed, the new operation can handle twice its current volume -- or 29,000 packages during its 16 hours of operation.

“The new Neopost/ASAM system allows us to perform at a higher rate of production with minimal downtime,” says Sawyer. “This is exactly what we were looking for in a new shipping manifest system.”

The results do not end there, however. With its automated shipping operation, Bay Networks was able to reduce its warehouse staffing requirements by nearly 50 percent (from 80 to 42), saving the company approximately $1 million annually in labor costs.

Even at such high processing speeds and high package volume, the accuracy rate of Bay Networks’ shipping operation has risen from about 90 percent previously to 99.8 percent today. Brad Hellwig, Bay Networks’ distribution manager, notes that this is an outstanding figure.

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