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Accu-Sort Systems, Always scanning for improvements

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US
Published : July 2007

Accu-Sort Systems has undergone a complete makeover since being acquired. President Gregg Branning tells Keith Regan how the new corporate DNA has changed the company for the better

From its founding, Accu-Sort Systems quickly became known as a leader in the development of technological solutions for high-speed bar code scanning. The Telford, PA–based company became a go-to supplier to the US Postal Service, UPS, FedEx, and other parcel and retail companies for new scanning and sorting solutions, and manufacturers around the world turned to the company to help sort goods coming to and going from factories and warehouses.

Today’s Accu-Sort, however, traces its most important development to late 2003, when global industrial giant Danaher, a $10 billion company based in Washington, DC, acquired the company. Danaher, through the Danaher Business System (DBS), provided the improvement experience and tools “to significantly turn around the company,” according to President Gregg Branning.

Changes have come across the five business units that make up Accu-Sort, Branning adds, including the Products group, which makes laser and camera-based scanners, dimensioners, and software applications; the Service group, which provides 24/7 customer support; and the RFID group, which develops RFID sortation and tracking systems. There’s also an Integrated Systems group that provides customers with customized, fully integrated hardware and software solutions that might include third-party products such as scales, labelers, or conveyors and a Federal Systems group that focuses on helping the USPS improve its sorting and scanning, occasionally in deployments that involve no direct product from the company. Some 80 percent of all packages shipped worldwide go through scanning systems that Accu-Sort helped set up.

Danaher brought a “new DNA” to the company, through DBS, one that considers kaizen improvement events a way of life. The efforts began by attacking the lack of consistent processes. Although Accu-Sort makes solutions tailored for each customer’s need, many of the parts and components are the same—but things weren’t necessarily being built that way.

“We looked at areas where it’s easy to make a mistake, where things were so customized they weren’t being built the same way twice,” Branning says. Within a year, by putting process changes in place, the defect rate dropped by a factor of 10 and is now at one-fortieth the pre-Danaher levels. “That’s very high quality—second to none in the industry,” Branning claims.

Still the company went further, using DBS, by looking at everything through the eyes of the customer. From that perspective, quality was a much more complicated question. Each scanning and sorting tunnel might include myriad components, from cameras and lasers to decoders and cables and photo-eyes. “From the customer’s perspective, if one cable fails, the whole scanning and sortation tunnel is impacted,” he notes. Looking at things that way prompted more focus on quality and also improvements to the way service is delivered, since every minute that a scanning system is out of commission costs a customer money.

The improvements also boosted on-time delivery to greater than 95 percent and also reduced the time it takes to set up a standard scanning tunnel from five days to less than a half day. Repairs also became faster, with most scanner components able to be switched out in five minutes and with components built to retain all their settings and other data when parts are replaced.

The new philosophy also caused a ripple effect in how Accu-Sort deals with customers. Now sales personnel, support, and service technicians often spend more time at customer sites, even before a problem arises, observing how the company’s products and solutions are being employed and anticipating potential improvements.

Accu-Sort Systems has also positioned itself to be ready to ride the long-anticipated wave of growth from RFID tracking, though growth so far has been more modest than has been predicted.

Being part of Danaher has paid off in other ways, including the ability to leverage an existing supplier network. “The power of being part of Danaher comes from not only its large size but its huge scope,” Branning says. Some 50 percent of the company’s sales come from overseas locations, giving it experience in sourcing in places such as China, India, and other low-cost regions. “It doesn’t matter where it is or what it is, we can leverage the Danaher network to go and get it.”

Branning says the company is eager to show customers just how much things have changed for the better. “The impacts on quality and service and support since Danaher acquired us have been tremendous,” he adds. “We’ve won back some customers, but there are customers we haven’t won back—yet. To them I’d say, ‘Come back and see the new Accu-Sort. We’re better than you think and better than anybody else.’”

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