On 9 February 2011 17:27, Peter Brooks <peter@???> wrote:
> Hi all,
> Just hijacking the other topic a little bit, the company I work for
> receives a lot of parcels for students from different couriers.
> We're looking to source a supplier for hardware & software to read
> address details from parcels and output that information into our own
> software.
>
> I've been trying to get information out of couriers but typically get
> passed from one department to another and ultimately they are unable
> to help.
>
> Just to clarify, this is for receiving parcels and not posting them out.
>
> One suggestion from a courier today was to "Contact every organisation
> that send you parcels and get the information from them". Students buy
> a lot of stuff from many many different organisations.
>
> We're a mini Amazon/Play depot. Commercial solutions welcome.
>
I have done work designing a warehouse management system for a high
street retailer. I will call the retailer "FRED".
This involves all the order management, tracking packages from
supplier, through the warehouse and to the end user.
It also included the controls for all the machines in the warehouse
that help with the storage and recall of items.
The simple answer is you will not get what you need from the mail companies.
Each system is a closed system. So, when an item leaves the warehouse,
we send the details to the system call "metapack". (via a computer
interface), and they return a label template, which we then printed
and stick on the box ready for when the courier picks it up.
"metapack" is a 3rd party that does the labels correctly for each
courier company.
We send "metapack" the end users address, and metapack decide on the
best courier for the task and returns label details for us to print.
The bar codes on the mail label rarely contain any address details.
They are normally internal numbers useful to the courier company.
For "incoming" the retailer had an advantage, it refused to accept any
suppliers products unless they had put a "FRED" tracking barcode
sticker on it.
So, for "incoming", the barcode was scanned and returned a number
"FRED" computer understood.
There were always exceptions though, so "incoming" also had label
printers to add "FRED" tracking barcodes where needed.
There are a lot of other reasons by barcode printer were needed, but I
will keep is simple here.
You do not have this luxury of a "FRED" incoming barcode.
I have expertise in all the different barcode scanners available.
I recommend for you to use a picture scanner. This takes a picture of
the label and then processes the picture.
Nowdays, you can even use mobile phones to do this. You will just need
an app for the phone to process the image.
So, I suggest that your computer system holds the following information
1) The original scanned image.
2) Any metadata the scanner has decoded from the image. E.g. Address,
barcodes, courier name etc.
If the scanning fails, a user can view the scanned image, and enter
the metadata manually.
You can then either use the existing label to track the package in
your warehouse, or print out your own labels for tracking.
You will need your own label printer when the existing label is
damaged, or unreadable by the scanner, and manual intervention is
needed to gather the metadata.
I don't think I have seen your particular problem at "FRED" because
the package is rarely preserved from "incoming" to "outgoing". E.g.
Incoming comes in packs to 100, outgoing sends 1 at a time, so the
package is opened, and then each individual item is tracked.
So, as what you need is probably not already done, I think you might
need to build it yourself.
When scanning the metapack labels, you can use the barcodes to help
the scanner orientate the picture correctly and select the correct
area of the label to send to OCR to get the address read.
In this way, the picture can be taken horizontally or vertically or
anywhere in between and the scanner can re-orientate it before it
reaches OCR.
For reading bar codes, I have seen some scanners being held 1 meter
away from the package and still decode the barcode.
If I was you, I would talk to metapack (
www.metapack.com) and see if
they can give you details of the layout on all the couriers they
support.
They might be able to help you with your problem of scanning the
metapack labels. (although their main task is actually creating the
labels)
Kind Regards
James
