Our new installation at Cambridge Assessment is now up and running. Cambridge Assessment operates and manages the University’s three exam boards, from setting and creating the assessment through to marking and issuing results. The Group Print & Operations’ processes include the printing, packaging, distribution, returns and onwards post-exam operations for 8 million learners in over 170 countries worldwide. Automating the goods-in and re-direction process Previously when the onwards destination sortation of the script packets was carried out manually, a maximum of 6,000 packets were processed each day. With the new automated system designed by Axiom, capacity has increased to 2,000 packets an hour and all goods-in packets are now processed the same day they arrive at the facility. The result is a fourfold increase of the annual capacity to over three million packets.
The system allows packets to travel over the sorter, gapped and conditioned ready to sort. Each sorter module will have its own tracking table in the main control system, photocell for product/data correction and encoder for tracking. If the packet in question is to be diverted to the out feed the main control system will divert the wheels on the sorter module (based on packet position, destination and the encoder feed back), one row at a time, as the packet advances over the sorter module (all the wheels do not turn together), as the packet passes the row of wheels they turn back to run parallel with the main line (this approach lets us divert products that are very close together and achieve really high throughputs). The divert only runs when a packet is coming, there is a time out (in distance) when the packet has gone, then the divert stops, the same rule applies to the wing and the intermediate conveyor.
