About that breakthrough in cubing

As it turned out, the only thing missing during a long year of product development was a potted plant.

But Cubiscan’s then marketing guru Randy Neilson (now president) addressed that oversight one cold Chicago morning before the ProMat materials handling show opened. That’s when he showed Clark Skeen, then and now chairman, that the soon-to-be-introduced Cubiscan 325 had more capability than they may have realized.

Using a potted plant that was decorating the company’s show booth, Randy scanned it with the new dimensioning device. And, it worked. Despite all the non-linear angles and gaps in that potted plant, the 325 correctly determined the dimensions of a box needed to ship the plant to the next booth or wherever—on the first try. Not a bad trick at a trade show. And now the 325 is a mainstay of the company’s cubing and weighing lineup.

Until then, explains director of engineering Robert Kennington, the company’s dimensioning devices were pretty much confined to determining the cube of shipping boxes. However, e-commerce was coming on quickly. All those eaches were going to have to be dimensioned to determine the right-sized box to ship items most cost effectively to you and me.

Kennington and his team needed to figure out how to make that not just possible but simple and highly accurate. “The unit needs to collect robust, accurate data quickly. No one in an e-commerce DC has the time to wait around for it to do its business, or, worse yet, get a wrong measurement,” Kennington explains.

If you haven’t met Kennington, you may not realize “close about” is not part of his engineering discipline. During development, Kennington persisted and got what he wanted. The 325 scans any shape up to 2 x 2 x 3 feet to within 1 mm of accuracy.

Getting there required some new technology and a new process patent. Without complicating it too much, this was a shift from using a gate that swings 90 degrees to scan an item to a lateral scanning gate with a much broader range. It also required a new array of LED components to ensure 1 mm accuracy regardless of the item’s shape or contours. Software takes care of the rest, resulting in a recommended shipping box size. The company says almost 400 of the 325 units are still in use today.

Cubiscan allowed booth visitors during the show to scan any item they wanted. There were plenty of eyeglasses and diamond rings dimensioned that week. Oddly enough, no one suggested a potted plant. Leave it to the marketing guy to think of that.