PACKET MACHINE@glasgow mail centre

[thehappyones]

hello again

what mail centres have these machines anybody know
also we at gmc have had oneput in recentley and the h&s on it is schocking
this includes our own staff and managers lifting these full totes by themselves when we were clearly told it was a 2 man lift

[pcb]

Inform your Area safety rep and the MC manager by letter. Leave a trail of corospondence and wait for the accident.

[Zorro]

hello again

what mail centres have these machines anybody know
also we at gmc have had oneput in recentley and the h&s on it is schocking
this includes our own staff and managers lifting these full totes by themselves when we were clearly told it was a 2 man lift

We have one here in Bristol, a load of crap really as it only moves work around.

As for H&S, it is better as people dont rip their backs with over-weight bags, but the biggest criminals are indeed our own employees!!!

[zaphod]

Agree. Zorro, you always see me working to rule on the bloody thing .

[POSTMAN]

Ok had to ask this,how the f**k does a 'Packet Machine' work!!

[zaphod]

The packet machine is no more than a conveyor of packets from one area of the shop floor to another. It does not sort the packets.

An operative has ten totes (big red boxes like those on Deal or No deal), in front of them, placed like fruit boxes at an angle on a fruit and vet stall. There is one box for each secondary road - although they are called legs on the machine. The primary operative 'places' packets into the tote according to the leg it is to be sorted to. The totes have light reflective sliding indicators, which click against a numbered scale. 1 for leg 1, etc... When the tote weighs no more than 10 kgs, the tote is manually pushed onto a conveyor belt or rollers behind it, whereby the tote moves off and down the machine on the main conveyor, passing by legs or side streets to it. When the indicator is read by a light source to go down a particular leg to a secondary road operative at the far end, the tote is pushed at 90 degrees by a pneumatic ram, down some gravity feed rollers. A separate ram stops any totes behind it from moving forwards while this happens. Operatives are supposed to sort from the tote, that is how the machine was designed, but this is impossible. Secondary operatives decant full totes into numerous mini yolks. Empty totes are then put onto a return belt that conveys it to a second main belt that runs above the first in the opposite direction, eventually finding itself back with a primary operative.

If the indicator is not read by any of the readers, the tote proceeds to the overflow. The world record we have for this on our shift is 1166 totes, whereby two operatives lift the tote from the machine, and dump into 1 of 10 mini yorks according to the leg that the tote should have gone to, and the york is then pushed to the leg or road it relates to. The overflow does not have its own return belt, and so boxes are stacked and manually returned, or legs 5 return belt is used. We were told that the overflow would not need a return belt, at the planning stage, despite protests.

We were sold the machine at WTL&L, as a simple solution, and that the machine would not go wrong because there is little to nothing that could go wrong with it.

Problems include:
Totes jamming constantly, on both belts.
Totes falling off the machine - leading to injury.
Faulty sensors.
No spare parts.
Overweight totes World record 26kgs.
Motors burning out.
Lack of space.

......and more.


Full DBF selection sorting is impossible using the machine. It would take to much time to tie bags and dispatch while the machine is running. Residue/crash sorting can only be used. No one though about the space or footprint that the machines and the roads/legs need. Then there are items that the Machine cannot handle - bulks and PSA. Operatives have to sort these as well as tend to the machine. They arrive to the legs/roads in the usual manual conveyed way.
I understand the use of Red Sleeve York is one the cards for dispatch into the network in the future.

Oh, and the people who put our machine together, have now gone out of the business, concentrating on the manufacture of milk bottle tops - I kid you not. Therefore, if something goes wrong with the machine from now on, on a large scale, there is no one in the country who can fix it. RoEMC engineers admit they do not have much of a clue about the machine, and major alarm bells rang when I spoke to our chief engineer, when it was planned to move the machine to another part of the office. 'We haven't got a clue!' was his reply.

He also told me that they have a similar system in Germany for Packet Processing, whereby the secondary operative is not needed
HTH

Edit and addendum - in addition, we were told, and we all did not believe this to a person, that the machine would replace two conveying duties from primary to secondary sorting, which was all that was needed before the machine came in. The truth is that the machine is there to cut down numbers of staff sorting on the secondary roads/legs - even though the same volume - if not more - work is coming into the office to be processed.

The machine means that we are producing an inferior - ie residue/crashed sorted product to other offices, where before, when we had full DBF sorting, we cleared regularly.

[POSTMAN]

Cheers zap very informative and interesting.
ps:

[k979aaa]

How much does this machine cost i bet it must of cost a PACKET!.

[zaphod]

RRP £14,000,000.

[Bromhamhatter]

Rumour has it that our 2nd class packets at Milton Keynes are going to go to an office with a packet sorting machine.

[cj_1985]

the packet machine...
that the thing just up a bit and opposite the writing clerks office.. and across from the PPI at an angle?

[oldrope]

Hello all, looking forward to getting the packet convayer at the MC where i work

[Tman]

RoEMC engineers admit they do not have much of a clue about the machine,

Understandable really, as ROMEC deal with building services like lifts, heating and vent, lighting etc rather than postal mech.....
It's a different company.

[zaphod]

Wrong!
RoMec is divided into three divisions. cleaners, odd job wo/men, and engineers.
RoMec also have a contract with Tesco's, and their future within Royal Mail is in doubt.

[Tman]

Not wrong at all.
ROMEC engineers (building services, etc) are entirely seperate from RME engineers, who work on RM automation.