BY DAVID MALONEY, SENIOR EDITOR
CUBING AND WEIGHING
materialhandlingupdate
ANYTHING A SUPPLY CHAIN SERVICE PROVIDER CAN DO TO CUT COSTS AND
increase capacity can help it stay competitive. Instituting a good dimensioning program is one of
those things, and for many companies, the data collected represents a gold mine of information.
Panalpina is one of the world’s largest supply chain solutions companies. Its 16,000 employees
operate from some 500 offices in 70 countries, providing air- and ocean-freight forwarding,
value-added logistics services, and other supply chain services. To better understand its loads,
Panalpina relies heavily on cubing and weighing systems to gather accurate dimensional and
weight data—information that can help it to better handle products and cut costs.
Panalpina measures almost all of the cartons and pallets that enter its facilities, recording their
dimensions and weights. For weighing items, the company uses scales supplied by First Weight,
NCI, Mettler Toledo, and others, depending on geography.
For the cubing process, the company relies on automated CubiScan systems from Quantronix
at selected hub locations. These systems provide exact measurements and do so with greater pre-
cision and speed than humans can. “We want to eliminate the human element,” says Tim Hotze,
corporate head of the logistics competence center North America and vice president of logistics
for Panalpina. “These systems are much more accurate than you or I are.”
The CubiScan systems deployed at Panalpina include units that provide case-level measure-
ments as well as models that perform dimensioning on pallet loads. For the company’s trans-
portation locations, the dimensioning information is imported into its transit warehouse
For global supply chain
solutions provider
Panalpina, access to solid
weight and dimensional
data has led to better,
more efficient cargo
handling operations.
A measurable difference
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