In times of economic hardship companies often slash promotional budgets in order to cut costs, but not VITRONIC. The Wiesbaden-based machine vision specialist has already exhibited at this year's intralogistics CeMAT exhibition, which took place 02-06 May in Hanover, Germany. It also plans to take a stand at Post Expo 2011 in Stuttgart 27-29 September.
Malcolm Smith, VITRONIC's UK Sales Manager, explains: "During a recession there is less money to spend in both the private and commercial sectors so investment in projects becomes less. This makes competition for what little business is out there extremely fierce and companies that are not visible in the marketplace lose out. With the UK beginning to recover economically, we decided to ramp up promotion rather than restrict it."
VITRONIC's 2011 exhibition concept is simple - camera systems VS traditional laser scanners. Cameras have significant advantages over laser scanners and, with logistics companies seeking to beat down inflated costs with faster, slicker systems, clearly represent the future.
Camera-based parcel recognition systems increase the level of automation, accelerate processes, improve efficiency and productivity relating to personnel placement, and slash costs.
Unlike laser scanners, camera systems read not just barcodes, but also 2D-codes, damaged or marked codes, and text information using optical character recognition (OCR) techniques. They can even interpret human written address information.
With facilities for manually entering unreadable labels, camera systems can achieve read rates close to 100%, far better than traditional laser scanners.
One of VITRONIC's key products is VIPAC, which operates above powered conveyors. It is configurable with up to six cameras to photograph all sides of a parcel, with the code or label being in any orientation on any of these faces. VIPAC feeds information directly to a sorter, which sends items for dispatch. A fully working VIPAC system will be on display at Post Expo.
Also on display at the exhibition will be VITRONIC's new product, VICAMsnap! Mounted above workstations, VICAMsnap !automatically reads barcodes and 2D-codes while leaving operators to grip a parcel with both hands. This makes the process faster and more comfortable because workers do not have to continually pick up and put down handheld scanning devices.
Despite economic times, 2011 is an exciting year for VITRONIC. The company is in good health and rapidly expanding across all of its industry sectors.
At Post Expo, VITRONIC will be located at stand no. 4040 in hall 1. It will fully man its stand with only the most experienced engineers, who are used to catering for customers with highly bespoke requirements.