Company: Deutsche Post

Location: 80 sorting centres throughout Germany

Application: checking and counting incoming direct mail materials

Mobile scales: 200 Bruss HGW-I hand pallet truck scales

General: Deutsche Post-World Net is the name under which the former German Post operates today. The name reflects the ambition to provide worldwide services in mail, express and logistics. Companies such as DHL, Danzas, Van Gend & Loos, SITS, Narrondo Desarollo, Securicor and Servisco were acquired by Deutsche Post for their know-how and market share in these fields.

The mail division of Deutsche Post ships 72 million letters per day. The main growth in this volume comes from Direct Marketing services: since the postman goes from door to door anyway, he is the ideal low cost solution for delivery of direct mail, unadressed mail shots, advertising flyers and catalogues. As the client pays for the actual number of flyers and catalogues delivered to the target group, incoming shipments need to be weighed and counted when they arrive at the DP sorting centres. For this purpose, Deutsche Post has been buying Bruss hand pallet truck scales for the last ten years. Over 200 of these scales are now in use at 80 separate locations throughout Germany.

Logistics: all shipments of direct marketing materials arrive at the sorting centres in plastic crates that are stacked onto wheeled containers. Upon arrival the shipments are weighed and the letters or catalogues counted. The resulting data is checked against the shipping documents and printed out on a ticket.

The HGW-I indicator is equipped with an internal memory for storing client names, product types and tare weights. When an operator lifts a container, the indicator first asks him to enter the type of container and the type and number of plastic crates in the container. From these data the scale computes the total tare weight of the shipment. Then the indicator prompts the operator to enter the type of mail. From its memory the indicator activates the piece weight attached to this type and calculates the number of envelopes or catalogues in the shipment. If the shipment is divided over several containers, the scale adds up the results into totals. Finally a ticket is printed that shows date and time, the client’s name, the weight of the mailing shipment, number and type of envelopes in the mailing, and the destination of the shipment within Deutsche Post.

When a shipment consists of catalogues stacked directly onto a single container, the software programme can be bypassed and the weight of the shipment is simply checked against the weight declared on the shipping documents and printed out when necessary.

Advantages of the mobile scale: apart from the logistic advantages of being able to weigh direct mail shipments when and where they are received, this mobile scale also carries the advantage that it is completely adapted to DP’s procedures and is flexible in its use. Via parameter settings it can be configured for either simple check weighing and printing of total weights, used at so called “freight centres”, where catalogues and packages are sorted, or for sophisticated counting procedures, used at “letter centres”, where letters and direct mail are sorted. The more complicated the weighing procedures, the more the operator is guided through the process via step-by-step prompts on the display of the indicator. This prevents errors and makes the scale extremely user-friendly.

M. Ludwig (Sb Entgeltsicherung/Annahme): “We can memorise the weight of the different crates, as well as data about client names and sorting centre. The memorised crate weights make the actual weighing process much easier, as there is no complicated calculations to be done in case of a mix of different crates. That makes for less errors.”

Company: Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. ,Tel Aviv, Israel

Location: 5 Basel St. Petach Tikva 49131, Israel
Application: Weighing and dosing of raw materials

Systems: 26 BRUSS HGW-M with integrated thermal printer and footbrake.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. is a global pharmaceutical company specializing in the development, production and marketing of generic and proprietary branded pharmaceuticals as well as active pharmaceutical ingredients. Teva is among the top 15 pharmaceutical companies and among the largest generic pharmaceutical companies in the world

For their clean room production cells, Teva uses 26 pieces BRUSS weighing hand pallet trucks for the correct weighing of the coating layer. The barrel with coating material is placed on the weighing hand pallet truck filling/weighing tablets before and after coating, each coating tablets suite (room) consist BRUSS HGW-M & coating machine. The systems configuration includes special fork dimension and special GLP printout layout. Weighing hand pallet trucks are also used for weighing row material before blending.

Benefit: work is being done faster and more efficiently.

The advantages of the weighing system

All weighing hand pallet trucks are made of stainless steel for optimum hygiene and they are equipped with on-board printers to record the used weights in a safe and secure way.

Another advantage of the mobile weighing systems is the fact that after each produces batch the production cell has to be cleaned according to a rigorous scheme. When using floor scales this was a time consuming job to clean the floor scale including the floor ( or pit ) under the floor scale. With a weighing hand pallet truck this cleaning process is much faster saving time and increasing production time, making the production machines more productive.

Teva is studying the possibilities of Bluetooth data capture from the BRUSS weighing hand pallet trucks into their IT system.