Postal Technology International Awards 2011

Automation Technology of the Year: Siemens' CFC 3004

Automatic pre-processing prepares postal items for sorting, and removes from the postal flow any mail that cannot be easily sorted and sends them to be handled manually. Sorting by hand adds time and cost to postal companies, so the ability to automatically sort postal items quickly and accurately is vital to a postal organisation’s success. This year’s winner of Automation Technology of the Year, the Siemens’ CFC 3004, aims to speed up work at mail handling centres by pre-processing large-format mail, which accounts for 10 to 15 percent of a country’s total mail volume.

The CFC 3004 processes regular letters and also allows for the pre-processing of letter sizes up to C4. Faced and stacked – and if necessary cancelled – most flats leave the machine prepared for direct induction into a flats sorter. Flats are scanned, and so can be positioned properly, correctly franked, and made suitable for reader- and video-coding systems for address recognition. These systems can be fully integrated, saving even more time and cost.

The CFC 3004 has a modular design, so customers can choose add-ons that best meet their needs. For example a weighing module for letters and flats weighing up to 300 grams can be added without any effect on the overall speed and performance of the system. With this module, and with additional features including dimension measuring and Automatic Colour Recognition (e.g. for stamp recognition and recognition of stickers for value added services) envelopes with insufficient postage can automatically be detected. A further module is a two-level sorter that sorts items into the correct walk sequence.

“The idea for the CFC 3004 began when we saw postal customers with a lot of flats in the sorting bay, waiting for manual processing,” says Sonja Frantz, vice president of Siemens Postal Solutions’ product life management for the CFC 3004. “Manual sorting is a cost-intensive process, so we decided to automate this pre-processing step in our new equipment. By enabling posts to pre-process a larger percentage of postal items – letters and now flats – we give them the ability to automate a time-intensive and expensive manual task.”

Frantz says that the CFC 3004, in addition to having a wider range of functions, is smaller than the company’s older machines but has higher operational throughput. “The drum used to have a length of 2.4m but is now 1.1m,” explains Frantz. “The entire machine has a more compact floor space – it takes up to 30 percent less floor space than older machines.

“The advantages of the CFC 3004 are obvious. There is a large decrease of manual processing, which means labour is automatic. Additionally the mail itself is handled more carefully with less damage, because with the smaller diameter of the drum the mailpiece goes through fewer rotations with less stress.”

Post Danmark tested the CFC 3004 in a pilot over Christmas 2010 to great success, says Frantz. “During the peak workload, Post Danmark had planned to use the CFC 3004 as a machine for overload to handle excess post. However because it processed a wider spectrum of post, cancelled 100 percent of mail and identified more underpaid mail, it quickly became the workhorse and the existing machines became the back-ups,” she says. “After seeing the results of the pilot, Post Danmark ordered seven machines, which will be in service by the end of 2012.”

Franz says that the win is a great achievement for Siemens: “I am very proud of our team, as everyone contributed to this success. It is also an award for our management, as it shows they are forward-thinking in having a massive technology investment in these challenging economic times. Clearly there is a great need for automation in the postal world.”

AUTOMATION TECHNOLOGY OF THE YEAR SHORTLIST:

• Crisplant’s LS-4000 Flexbelt
• Siemens’ CFC 3004
• NPI’s Crossfire
• Vanderlande Industries’
• Crossorter 1500