When DHL Worldwide Express set up its main European distribution center at the Brussels Airport in Belgium, it wanted to sort at high speed thousands of packages for expedited delivery each night. Because package identification was fundamental to achieving accurate and efficient sortation, the package delivery company turned to bar codes to easily identify each package as it travels through the hub.

One of the world's leading couriers, DHL established its sorting center in Brussels for all of Europe, using the most advanced technology and an extremely high level of automation. The automated sortation system was designed to tackle increasing traffic volumes in the competitive parcel delivery market, while ensuring a service of the highest level of quality and reliability. This center now processes 60 percent of all of DHL's European parcel traffic: 500 tons of material each night, with distribution to more than 400 locations.

All packages sent from one country to another now converge on this facility. Each parcel is identified with a unique bar code number that is read in the center automatically, sorted and sent out to the country of destination. The system has a 38,000 item per hour capacity. Future upgrades are expected to sort as many as 47,000 parcels per hour.

To ensure sortation accuracy, DHL evaluated many data capture scanning systems. This included a trial installation of a reading station in Bahrain, DHL's main hub for the Middle East.

The choice of the reading station, and therefore of the right bar code reader, is essential to the complete success of the sortation stations, says the company. The entire sorting process is based on the performance of the bar code reader, which allows the parcels to be correctly identified and consequently sent to the correct address on the first try. Read rates and accuracy must be high to ensure efficient operations. Otherwise, all non-identified parcels must be read manually, increasing operational costs unnecessarily.

Today, 20 reading stations are installed in the Brussels hub. Each consists of two scanners in single-cross positioning for omni-directional reading. This allows the scanners to read the codes presented in any orientation, on the top, front and both sides of the parcel. Each parcel contains two codes and is placed under plastic in a standard DHL delivery bag, which is one of the major challenges to reading the bar codes accurately and quickly.

The scanners selected read bar codes accurately in nearly 100 percent of cases. Combined with the sortation system, DHL's Brussels hub is able to provide the highest levels of quality and reliability.