Testimonials
Case Studies
Prime Vision is proud to announce it's first contract award in Mexico. The project, for a major postal and logistics operator, will see Prime Vision install it's award-winning ParcelMatch automation platform along with modules such as Key-IT video coding and more. Prime Vision is scheduled to complete installation and commissioning of the new facility in the fourth quarter of 2012. Further information will be released in due course.
New Year – traditionally the time to take stock, change ways and get fit for purpose. At the start of 2012 postal automation expert, Prime Vision, is encouraging its customers to apply these resolutions in the workplace to create healthy automation systems that will optimise productivity and streamline costs.
The company continues to invest heavily in what it describes as its Competence Centre. This is Prime Vision’s customer support division that underpins its wide range of products and services that centre on recognition and automation but now extend to include systems design, integration and optimisation.
Consultancy services are of course widely available in the industry but the way Prime Vision has developed allows it to offer something distinctly different. The company has no formal affiliation with any hardware or ancillary provider, although it has worked with the majority of them. This independence means Prime Vision is in a unique position to recommend a solution that is truly the best for the job.
Prime Vision has evolved strategic relationships with many postal organisations across the world and in many instances complements the in-house team in developing new technology to improve process efficiency. Joint Head of Operations at Prime Vision Hans Kamperman is heavily involved in this work.
“For these customers it’s more a case of adding functionality and building in flexibility to accommodate market changes and protect revenue,” he explained. “But for others the need can be much more fundamental. There could be a bottleneck at the sorter caused by problems on the induction lines. Or maybe images are not being captured or read competently. Our consultancy service covers all the variables that influence process inefficiency.”
Hans Kamperman concludes: “It’s all about applying smart technology to extract every percentage point of performance gain. Prime Vision is expert in this field and we therefore invite any postal organisation to take advantage of our automation ‘health check’ service to ensure optimal productivity in 2012 and beyond.”
Are you attending the World Mail & Express Americas conference next month? If so, we hope to see you there.
Prime Vision is currently working on many interesting projects in the Americas region, including Latin America, for the postal and express-logistics market.
Richard Hagen and Mark Ryder will be representing Prime Vision and would welcome the opportunity to setup a meeting during this busy event. Simply drop us an email at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with your preferred meeting times and we'll reserve times accordingly.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Date: 5 February 2012 - 7 February 2012
Location: Trump International Beach Resort, Miami, Florida
More info at:
http://www.triangle.eu.com/events/world-mail-express-americas-2012/
To all our valued clients and partners around the world, Happy New Year!...or "Gelukkig Nieuwjaar!" as we say in Delft.
Our clients are certainly a merry bunch, festooned with good fortune, monumental cost-savings and the most-efficient of automation and recognition systems in the kingdom! Many will no-doubt trace their good fortune back to the day they resolved to call Prime Vision in years past.
For some, Prime Vision is a new discovery...and for them we have some good news...it's never too late to make your New Year's resolution!
Austrian Post (Post AT) has just signed an annual rolling contract with Prime Vision for nationwide software support. Its ParcelMatch OCR and Key-IT video coding products are installed at each of Austrian Post’s seven parcel sorting centres across Austria, but the scope of the agreement goes way beyond preventative and corrective maintenance.
ParcelMatch OCR is enhanced at every site by another Prime Vision module, its label identification tool. This enables the system to store different label types for the automated reading of machine printed text. These OCR products work in tandem with SICK camera systems, a partner with whom Prime Vision has a long standing working relationship.
In today’s market most posts have already committed to automation. So the role of companies such as Prime Vision is to ensure customers continue to fine-tune their systems to extract every possible performance gain. And this is where Prime Vision stands out from the crowd.
The support contract for Austrian Post typifies Prime Vision’s proactive approach. In addition to conducting a twice-yearly health check of the system, including exact read and error rate analysis, its support extends to working in partnership with customers to identify areas of potential improvement to optimise business growth.
Prime Vision’s newly restructured and much larger support department will provide the front line support for this new contract. It works in compliance with ITIL IT service management procedures, which provide a cohesive set of best practice rules, drawn from international public and private sectors.
Delivering continuous improvements in postal automation rates, quality and new services can be a challenging field financially, as most platforms require up-front investment. Why not transform those fixed costs into flexible costs with a cloud-based platform? This presentation explores the capabilities offered and, importantly, the benefits to the postal operator.
Our CEO Eddy Thans will be presenting in the morning session “Managing organisational change in the postal environment”, Thursday 29th of September “. If you’re not attending the conference but interested to see Eddy’s presentation, please send an email to (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and we’ll forward you the presentation content after the Post-Expo show.
Prime Vision has a great show lined up for the Post-Expo show and conference in Stuttgart, 27-29th September. We do hope to see you there! The Prime Vision booth is near the centre of the hall at 5018.
This year we will be showing demonstrators of our latest indicia recognition technology for revenue recovery and protection applications, plus unveiling our Process-IT Semi-Automated Workstaton that is proving very popular with our early adopters.
Catch CEO Eddy Thans at the operations conference on Thursday morning in the segment "Re-engineering postal operations through innovation".
As always, you can expect something a little different from Prime Vision. See you there!
Such has been the success of the Parcel and Post Experience Day hosted by Vanderlande Industries that the next event is already being planned with the view to it becoming a regular occurrence. It brought together automation experts from all corners of the sector to create a comprehensive technology forum in which delegates could explore the latest developments.
Prime Vision was one of the participating experts, an OCR specialist that has recently broadened its scope to include systems integration and project management. “This was a great opportunity for us to showcase some of our achievements,” explained the company’s Ellen Brender a Brandis. “It allowed us to demonstrate how we are now working alongside our competitors and other suppliers to achieve the best solution for the customer.”
Organised by Vanderlande Industries’ at its headquarters in the Netherlands, the Experience Day featured presentations by Sick, Ancra and Prime Vision. It was chaired by the independent postal expert, Derek Osborn and attended by more than 30 delegates from postal organisations including DHL, TNT, DPD, Posten Norge and Itella.
Ellen Brender a Brandis continued: “The feedback from delegates has been extremely positive. The best automation solutions rely on the expertise of different suppliers and their willingness to work together towards a common goal. This event effectively demonstrated the benefits of good collaboration. Vanderlande Industries did a great job as our hosts and we would welcome the opportunity to take part in similar events in the future.”
With its commitment to a new phase of parcel automation, Post Danmark continues to break new ground in optimising its resource management and customer service. "One of the first ever customers for our parcel OCR platform, Post Danmark has steadfastly invested in automation ever since," explains Mark Ryder, of Prime Vision, the principal contractor for this latest phase of development.
The order from Post Danmark represents a major sales success for Prime Vision. It has been chosen not only to develop core recognition technology but is also responsible for managing and integrating the entire system including new camera imaging tunnels. And central to the system is the latest generation ParcelMatch recognition system and Key-IT video coding systems that will completely replace their existing forerunners. The project involves completely new hardware systems in the twin sorting hubs at Brøndby and Taulov that will link into the post's new rationalised distribution system.
This initiative effectively removes a second sorting process so that parcels sorted at the hubs are ready for immediate transfer to delivery vans when they reach the distribution centres. "The project has required Prime Vision to develop a much deeper level of coding for Post Danmark," Mark Ryder explains. "The ParcelMatch system has become an open integration platform for multiple OCR engines from Prime Vision and other vendors, in fact four in total all integrated by Prime Vision. This aspect delivers a platform for Post Danmark with a high performance level today and continuous improvement potential as business needs develop over the coming years.
This is a prestigious and exciting project and Prime Vision is delighted to be taking a lead role in its implementation."
PHRASE, the evolving recognition-based reasoning concept developed by Prime Vision that is proving to be the ideal springboard for numerous projects.
The first product of this new-thinking is a Last Coding Device (LCD) for TNT Post. As its name suggests, LCD is an end-of-line product that is designed to reintroduce every possible ‘no-read' back into the automated sorting system. It processes every mailpiece that fails all previous scans, completing an eight OCR cascade from different vendors. And its effect has far exceeded expectations.
The technology that has been used to create LCD is unique in that it offers a solution for both machine-printed and handwritten text. It factors in everything that appears on the envelope. While comparable systems may offer similar functionality for printed addresses, Prime Vision's PHRASE technology now provides powerful reasoning for even the most difficult to read handwritten text too.
The PHRASE technology is a novel technique that recognises all address elements that appear on the mailpiece - city, postal code, street, house number, addressee, etc - and these details to find the best matching delivery point from the address database.
It is a completely holistic approach that factors in misspellings, neighbouring localities, alternative names, incorrect postal codes and missing information. All are taken into account and resolved. Indeed the Prime Vision LCD solution reads mail in the reject stream that none of the other seven OCR systems in the TNT Post process chain could read. LCD also corrects anomalies thrown up by these systems.
PHRASE is the technological development that has allowed this exceptional OCR performance. Its name is derived from ‘Prime Vision Holistic Reasoning and ASsignment Engine' and this development has not only been used as the basis of the project for TNT Post but also others that have called for end-of-line help with printed text handwriting or both. All these projects provide proof of how Prime Vision, with its huge in-house knowledge base, can swiftly create a custom solution that can be implemented and adapted for any customer.
PHRASE will be the basis of a major article in the June edition of Postal Technology International magazine. For more details regarding PHRASE and the benefits for your application, contact Prime Vision at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Did you know about Prime Vision's internship programme for students?
Prime Vision is located adjacent to one of the worlds leading technical universities (TU Delft) and the Dutch research organisation TNO is also one of our shareholders.
Prime Vision, as a major high-tech research organisation since 1956, has close ties with the academic world and has offered students a range of technical placements in the fields of pattern recognition, image processing and software engineering.
Following a successful trial at our UK office, Prime Vision has now expanded the scope of its intern programme to include international marketing and business studies placements as well. Whilst technical placements will always be located at our corporate headquarters in Delft, marketing and business studies placements are available from our corporate headquarters and regional offices in UK and Australia.
Interested? Click here to find out more.
Prime Vision's Mark Ryder participated at last months PosTech conference with a presentation titled "Beyond Borders: Pushing the envelope even further for cost-savings". The speech presented Prime Vision's latest developments in WebCoding and also announced remarkable case study material from the first nine months of operation of WebCoding combined with off-shoring at TNT's european postal coding operation. The TNT Shore facilities in India, Philippines and Vietnam are now processing mail for all mail streams from seven sorting centres in the United Kingdom and many more in The Netherlands. The new figures provided by TNT have exceeded all expectations of the programme.
Sydney - April 1st 2011
Prime Vision, a leader in automation and recognition systems design, is proud to announce the opening of a new office in the Citigroup building, Sydney serving clients and partners in Australia.
The new office provides the full range of Prime Vision products and services, including consultancy and automation systems design.
Prime Vision has appointed Mr. Tom Ellis as General Manager, an industry specialist that is well known and respected for many years in the Australian market.
More information in our April Newsletter!
Mark Ryder and Richard Hagen will be representing Prime Vision and would welcome the opportunity to meet you. Schedule a meeting by contacting +31 15 219 2090 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
We look forward to seeing you there. Prime Vision will be available all days and participating on the Thursday conference session.
Prime Vision has pleasure announcing the winner of our WebCoding iPad competition.
Mr. Henning Holt from Posten Norge AS in Norway is now the proud owner of an Apple iPad.
Thank you to all participants. As a further thank you for requesting information on our award-
winning WebCoding solution you will have automatic entry in our next competition planned for the summer.
Prime Vision is pleased to announce that our Rock Star Support Manager Ben Schellingerhout has joined a very special club: colleagues with 25+ years service.
Ben joins our Senior Project Manager Rob Pieterse who celebrated his 25 year anniversary earlier this year.
Well done Ben and Rob!
… Prime Vision’s WebCoding System receives a glowing first report
Prime Vision’s new, award-winning WebCoding System is the basis of TNT Shore, a brand new ‘offshore’ video coding service launched at Post Expo by TNT Post. Robust and redundant, it has already transformed the way TNT Post manages its essential manual keying activities.
Although a complex automation solution it was delivered by Prime Vision in a simple integrated package. It has brought immediate cost savings and performance improvements on all types of mail streams and introduced an additional source of income for the operator too.
The first phase of the Prime Vision system went live in summer this year after extensive trials during the Christmas 2009 peak season and the following Spring. As well as optimising the processing of TNT Post’s own mail, this investment also provides the operator with a cost-per-click service that it can offer to other postal operators.
At the heart of the TNT Post WebCoding system is a Prime Vision multi-level workflow manager. This directs the video-coding traffic from the operator’s sorting centres across the Netherlands into a single data stream whose destination is TNT Shore’s point-of-presence in Amsterdam. This links to the TNT Shore ‘offshore’ service and next stop, the world!
From Amsterdam, the Netherlands data is sent for cost-saving keying to countries such as The Philippines and Vietnam. Traffic from the UK network has now been brought on-line too and further expansion to other TNT countries is planned.
“I’m amazed at what we have achieved in a really short time,” explained Mario Suykerbuyk, Director of TNT Post. “The flexibility provided by the Prime Vision system is great, like flicking a switch, it’s so easy to ramp up and scale down production.”
The timeline of this project has been incredibly short, just six months. Its twin aims were to deliver economy and improve quality and WebCoding has proved a resounding success on both counts. Mario Suykerbuyk concludes, “As well as showing an early and substantial reduction in the operation costs, WebCoding has raised our quality by an impressive 10%.”
Prime Vision and TNT are currently in discussions with many other postal organisations to offer their joint expertise and share the findings. The WebCoding product is available as an upgrade for existing Prime Vision clients or may be included in new system designs. Equally, the TNT Shore service is also available for other operators to join the system and gain substantial cost-savings from the combined volumes.
Prime Vision is proud to announce that it has won the 2010 Award for Automation Technology of the Year for their new WebCoding products and TNT Shore for their offshore coding service. The announcement was made at an awards ceremony at the Post-Expo show in Copenhagen by Post-Expo founder and CEO of UKIP Media & Events Tony Robinson and noted the runaway win in a very competitive category.
Further comments and coverage will follow in the next few days, however we can report that Eddy Thans CEO Prime Vision and Mario Suykerbuyk Director TNT Shore are very proud in this achievement and recognition of a ground-breaking technology and service combination.
Combine your visit to Post-Expo this year with a tour of Post Danmark's automated parcel centre at Brøndby near Copenhagen. Post Danmark have implemented the first stage of an upgrade program for their parcel centres with an innovative multiple-OCR ParcelVision platform going live just last week. You simply can't miss this opportunity, so be quick to sign-up to the limited places remaining courtesy of Posten Norden. The tour includes several processing facilities. Prime Vision recognition software is also employed for processing the flats mail stream in Denmark. Link and details are posted below, don't miss this great opportunity!
As host sponsor of Post-Expo 2010, Posten Norden is pleased to invite you to a guided tour of our production facilities. Our guided tour programme will include visits to: Lyongade Distribution Centre, Copenhagen Mail Centre, Brønby Parcel Centre, International Mail Centre, Copenhagen Airport.
Places on the tours are limited. To confirm your place please visit http://www.postexpo.com/guided_tours.php
As places are very limited, we will also coordinate additional tour dates in the future with Post Danmark, so please register your interest at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for information on future tours.
Prime Vision and Vitronic are pleased to announce the award of a major upgrade program order from the Post Danmark division of Posten Norden. Post Danmark was one of the first clients back in 2006 to install the very first ParcelVision platform and Prime Vision is proud to have been selected as integrator-of-choice by Post Danmark to develop another world-first: multiple OCR platform for flats and parcels. Prime Vision will be integrating the latest camera systems from Vitronic, coupled with three OCR engines for automatically processing machine printed and handwritten addresses. Our latest video-coding solution will support coding traffic from multiple sites, enabling sharing of the workflow for the first time. The complete system will be implemented at Post Danmark parcel sorting hubs in Taulov and Brøndby.
Lars Bryldt Christensen, Senior Project Manager at Post Danmark comments "We are very happy that our two suppliers Prime Vision and Vitronic, with Prime Vision as the integrator, has come together to help meet Post Danmarks future challenges on the market for flats and parcels by developing a combined and unique OCR platform matching our demands. We look very much forward to working close together in the project to get the best result possible."
Mark A. Ryder, Head of Marketing at Prime Vision comments "We have a very strong project team comprising all the stakeholders in the program at Post Danmark, Prime Vision, Vitronic and Crisplant. The development approach has been refreshing for all concerned and we now embark upon the project with a lot of enthusiasm and energy to deliver this worlds-first to our founding ParcelVision client, Post Danmark".
Klaus Michael Buecher, head of Sales and Marketing at Vitronic comments: “Post Danmark had chosen the best solution for their needs in order to improve the overall read-rates in both of their hubs – Brøndby and Taulov. A combination of excellent image acquisition hardware of VITRONIC for multisided reading and the integration of multiple OCR engines will improve Post Danmark’s overall performance. The cooperation between all participants (Prime Vision as General Contractor, Crisplant, and VITRONIC) is “easy going”. We are looking forward to this co-operation.”
To achieve its aim of reaching a target of 94% next-day delivery within the State, An Post is investing heavily in the latest letter automation technology. Indeed it is about to install innovative new systems at each of its four sorting centres in Dublin, Port Aloise, Cork and Athlone.
OCR specialist Prime Vision was awarded the complete software contract for this project in January of this year. However, its involvement extends far beyond the development and supply of the necessary software modules.
Prime Vision has also been appointed the project’s system’s integrator, responsible for applying the new technology to the existing NEC and Siemens sorting machines that have been installed in recent years. And the final facet of Prime Vision’s involvement is as ‘life cycle maintenance partner’, a role that spans the next ten years.
Prime Vision’s software solution combines a work flow and sortation manager from its longstanding US associate, Address Vision Inc., with an innovative IT platform and all recognition technology developed and tailored by Prime Vision in the Netherlands. The OCR software is for address reading, stamp reading and indicia recognition.
Prime Vision is delighted to confirm that system development is progressing well. The organisation of workshops at An Post to review and evaluate key steps in the process has contributed greatly to its smooth running.
“An Post has been highly appreciative of our structured approach to this project,” confirmed Prime Vision’s Richard Hagen. “And it’s all looking extremely good for final system testing in September.”
Prime Vision is delighted to welcome Wouter Loomans to its ranks. He has joined the company as Account Manager for the UK and Eastern Europe, two territories with distinctly different needs.
“In the UK the outcome of the potential part-privatisation of Royal Mail is driving the smaller postal operators to refine their automation to create the most attractive service,” Wouter explains. “In Eastern Europe automation is the newcomer. It is just starting to be integrated alongside manual procedures so my role here will be very different. The contrast between the two will make my job very interesting.”
A graduate from a business school in Amsterdam, Wouter has joined Prime Vision from DistriSort, a leading supplier of sorting systems. During his time with this company he was part of the team responsible for the TNT SMO Project which involved implementing new sorting systems for mixed mail at five TNT hubs.
Initially Wouter will be focussing on new business for Prime Vision but ultimately he will also become involved in supporting established customers. And in addition to representing Prime Vision’s considerable interest in the postal market in the UK and Eastern Europe, Wouter has also been appointed the company’s Product Manager for its OCRlite product programme. These Prime Vision products use any detail in a data-capture image as a means of automating product handling in a broad variety of industries.
Prime Vision, the postal integrator and OCR specialist, is delighted to confirm that Itella has awarded the company a four-year support contract for each of its five sorting centres throughout Finland. In line with the high productivity that Itella has achieved through its investment in automation and OCR, this 24-hour support contract is geared to maximising uptime.
The contract covers all servers, cameras and dimensioning systems and includes a high degree of preventative maintenance. Prime Vision LiveLink provides remote system diagnosis and works in tandem with the hotline direct to Prime Vision support specialists.
Itella has consistently led the field in parcel automation, a policy that has optimised its operation and underpinned its productivity. This postal organisation recognised early the value of high performance OCR and chose ParcelVision as the software platform for its phased investment in automation. In the future Itella is considering centralised video coding for redundancy purposes, an important facility in a country where the weather can easily disrupt operations.
Postal organisations naturally seek automation products that outperform others. But in today’s market superior features and benefits aren’t sufficient in themselves to ensure best return on investment. Increasingly the quality of post-installation service and support is becoming a crucial factor.
Automation can substantially boost the cost-efficiency of any operation but if downtime isn’t minimised then this advantage can be nullified. Prime Vision OCR operates at the heart of critically important postal sorting systems throughout the world. Its systems are built to be robust and fault-tolerant to ensure the best return on the automation investment. However the company has also developed an expert parallel support mechanism to guarantee that any problems will be handled swiftly and efficiently.
Prime Vision actively asks for customer feedback on all its products, including service and has recently analysed statistics from its annual customer satisfaction questionnaire. Customers were asked to rate satisfaction in service response time on a scale of 1 – 5 and for this Prime Vision scored an average of 3.83. Satisfaction in the quality of reports issued by the company in response to a service problem was rated at 3.68 and overall satisfaction in service level came in at a creditable 4.08.
“The company is very pleased with the results,” commented Prime Vision’s Mark Ryder. “We only received a few suggestions for improvement and most of our customers confirmed that we do everything they expect, and more. Exceeding expectations is our aim and there is always room for improvement; therefore we will be striving for even better figures other the coming year.”
The main challenges for such a system are the separation of the subtitle text from the complex background and discriminating subtitle text from other overlay text.
The first results are promising and show that our technology can successfully be used for video OCR.
When Prime Vision was commissioned to provide Ciblex Benelux with an OCR system to capture address data automatically, a read rate of 95% was the goal. What the company achieved however substantially exceeded that objective. On an average production run the Prime Vision OCR is now providing this leading parcel carrier with a read rate of more than 98%.
Ciblex Benelux has become the preferred carrier in the optical and medical sector in recent years. Indeed its success in this field has prompted the company to re-locate to larger premises in Zaventum near Brussels. It has also invested in a new Vanderlande parcel handling system central to which is a camera complete with Prime Vision OCR. And a key requirement was to get the system fully operational in a very short time frame.
The resultant ParcelVision label identification tool is responsible for reading the machine-printed address data on pre-defined label formats. Currently there are fifty format variants but the system allows more to be easily added. In addition to country and postal codes, the system is designed to recognise several different product codes such as those relating to delivery time.
The system has been operational since January 2010 and is able to handle up to 4,000 parcels per hour. “Ciblex Benelux was impressed by the ease of system integration and is very satisfied with the overall project outcome,” Project Manager Rob Pieterse concludes. “Their Managing Director told us to make sure the dump shoot is empty. And that’s exactly what we’ve done!”
Prime Vision is pleased to announce the appointment of Mark Ryder to the post of Head of Marketing & Communications with effect from April 5th 2010. Mark has been with Prime Vision since 2006 and in his most recent role was responsible for sales in the United States, United Kingdom and Scandinavian markets.
Eddy Thans, CEO Prime Vision comments that "the company continues to enjoy substantial growth even in today’s demanding market and now is the time to expand our marketing function to position and communicate those strengths to our focus markets. This appointment is in line with our strategy to grow the team in a planned, sustained manner to meet the needs of our clients and shareholders and deliver the next growth phase of the company."
Mark, who holds a Diploma in Marketing and is a member of The Chartered Institute of Marketing has eighteen years' experience in the automation and identification market. Mark adds, "I'm very much looking forward to this exciting opportunity; marketing is an art and a science and my aim is to bring both to the role. Prime Vision is developing fast in the field of recognition technologies and the whole integration platform for postal and logistics organisations; we are at an exciting confluence of capability and market demand."
Prime Vision, the leading recognition and integration specialist for the postal automation market, today announces a development program to expand its recognition technologies to include voice and speaker recognition for the benefit of its substantial user base around the world.
Prime Vision will be working together with its TNO sister company, Dutchear, to develop voice recognition as an enhancement to those automation tasks that will always require some man/machine interface.
Did you know that Prime Vision invests over 20% of turnover in research and development initiatives and collaborates amongst a team of 5,000 of the leading scientists in Europe? Being part of the TNO organisation has always been a great strength and differentiator for Prime Vision in the market. TNO is an independent research organisation whose mission is to "apply scientific knowledge with the aim of strengthening the innovative power of industry and government" and is a 40% shareholder of Prime Vision.
"This academic and research background drives everything we do at Prime Vision" says Michiel De Rijcke, Head of R&D, "We are always looking to combine technology in a smart way that delivers real benefits and performance enhancements for our clients". Hans Jongebloed, Head of R&D at Dutchear, is looking forward to the development potential and further collaboration with Prime Vision, "At Dutchear we have developed a very high competence and performance level in speech technology which can be applied in many different applications; we would like to apply our technology to the postal and logistics market in which PrimeVision is a very strong player."
Richard Hagen, Director of Sales adds "We see some exciting opportunities resulting from these new developments. Prime Vision has always been successful in integrating the best that technology offers into modular, high-performance solutions for the postal market."
For the project 'NRS web' we are creating web-services for TNT Netherlands. These components will be used to process services that are now covered by the Dutch Post Offices.
Some examples of web-services are: vehicle registration, fish pass, gift cards, and concert tickets. Read more.
Creating these web-services is a new chapter in the Prime Vision history and heralds the capability to deliver many more value-added solutions for our clients.
The British Forces Post Office (BFPO) has a twin role, that of service provider and also of morale booster. As a result it has always been keen to embrace the latest technology to optimise its function in support of forces serving abroad. Prime Vision is therefore delighted to be playing its part, particularly at this time of year when efficient communication between family and friends is especially important.
Working with the main integrator partner, Crisplant, Prime Vision has provided BFPO with a complete turnkey hardware and software solution. This included the installation of two CCD line scan cameras, dimensioning systems, servers and Prime Vision OCR for parcels and mixed mail. The system is complemented by our video coding solution for processing any exceptions.
The parcel traffic includes a high percentage of free-form addresses and special codes representing destinations all over the globe. Typically, more than 50% of the address details are hand-written, the automatic capture of which is a particular strength of Prime Vision’s patented OCR software.
Families of British service personnel are also able to send packages up to 2kg, free of charge. The automation of this unique service was therefore one of the special requirements of this project.
“This was a great project to be involved with,” explained Prime Vision’s CEO Eddy Thans. “BFPO was already very experienced in the use of OCR for letter mail and the requirement was therefore to develop an enhanced system that incorporated parcels too.”
Last November our trainee Oscar Javier Reyes Acosta won a Red Dot Design Award in a design competition of the Red Dot Institute. Oscar graduated in July 2009 and enjoyed the competition with his graduation project “Third Vision System”. Read more.
In sorting centres manual handling can never be completely avoided, there will always be odd shape parcels that can not be placed in the main conveyor, for this reason human operators are needed. It takes 3 operators and 20 seconds to sort just one parcel and manually keying the postcode and address create the biggest bottle neck for the sorting processes.
The current hand held scanners used by the operators recognize only bar code or they are attached to fixed points by cables.
Prime Vision felt that there was a lot to gain in this area and started the development of the Third Vision System, together with the Industrial Design faculty of the Technical University Delft.
The Third Vision System is an intelligent machine for image processing. It consists of a Third Eye cam and the Third Vision software. The Third Eye cam is a wearable head held camera designed to gather images of the parcels’ surfaces from the operators’ point of view using hand gestures to control the camera. The Third Vision software is developed to recognize framing hand gestures in front of the camera. The system is able to locate and read address labels at parcels during the manual handling of parcels. It is a wireless solution to be used in sorting centres, warehouses and every industrial environment where human labour is needed to sort goods (packages) while gathering the postcode, address and client data written or printed on the parcels’ labels.
The Third Vision system has a lot of advantages.
During the first tests it became clear that the sorting time can be reduced up to 7 seconds! But apart from this the system will make the handling of parcels a more encouraging, motivational and challenging activity with less stress.
If you need camera based object detection techniques in your Parcel or Logistics application, then PV-ID comes to rescue.
In PV-ID the state-of-the-art object identification techniques, developed by Prime Vision have been bundled in one complete package. Building on years of expertise, PV-ID enables robust object detection and identification for a large range of applications. With PV-ID the identification of logo’s, sign of payment, labels, or even whole boxes can be handled with an absolute minimum of user interaction.
PV-ID naturally complements ParcelVision 3.0 and OCRlite, where object detection and identification techniques are an essential tool for their excellent OCR-performance.
Many Prime Vision clients are discovering the benefits in establishing a long-term support agreement for their systems. NEXT Retail plc in the UK are one of several leading companies to do just that.
Prime Vision leads the industry with its wide range of support services and was the first to invest in a 24/7 hotline manned by Prime Vision software specialists. Ben Schellingerhout, Prime Vision Support Manager, comments “every system comes complete with a secure support link back to Prime Vision headquarters that enables us to be online with the system within 5 minutes of receiving a call from the client. We are able to offer absolute piece of mind via this service as our specialists can see the status and history of every hardware and software module in the clients system and offer immediate support.”
Mark A. Ryder adds “Prime Vision are pushing the boundaries of performance and reliability with every new product release which presents an interesting paradigm when it comes to support; systems are so reliable that when an issue occurs the clients site engineering or I.T. team may not have had to look at the system for months at a time. This is where Prime Vision can be called upon for immediate specialist assistance”.
Contract clients benefit from a tailored SLA (Service Level Agreement) that guarantees both the response times and escalation procedure between the client and Prime Vision. Contract clients also receive free-of-charge software updates as they are released and routine pro-active system healthchecks and maintenance.
For a tailored support package and valuable multi-year benefits, contact Prime Vision today.
In the October 2009 edition of Postal Technology the White Paper “Parcel & flats automation hits prime time” will be published. The White Paper introduces ParcelVision 3.0 which provides a complete automation platform to process the identification of flats and parcels on automated sorting systems, of course for the lowest price. To download the White Paper please follow this link.
Prime Vision is pleased to announce the award of a deployment contract for its web-based video-coding solution in the Netherlands by TNT Post Group. The contract award follows the successful trials during the last Christmas and New Year’s period, TNT Post contracted Prime Vision to build a fully functional version within a very short timeframe. This new functionality creates a secure video coding environment making it possible to encode letters via a standard internet browser at any location with internet connectivity.
Prime Vision CEO Eddy Thans comments “the web-based video-coding extension is a revolutionary development with lots of potential for cost-savings and efficiency improvements. TNT will become amongst the first to benefit from this new platform.”
In another development:
TNT and Prime Vision have signed a contract to develop new fundamental techniques and to apply these in the “recognition-chain” of TNT Post.
There are two main goals: Further enhancment of the read-rates and reduction in the error-rates at TNT Post, plus investments in new, promising techniques.
Mr. De Rijcke, Prime Vision Head of R&D, proudly tells us: “within our team there are always so many research ideas regarding how to improve handwriting recognition. Certainly in the field of handwriting and difficult typescript there are a lot of possibilities (potential) to improve. The state of the current business environment is such that it is a challenge to convince customers to invest, even in light of a great business case. We are happy that our ideas are so good that TNT Post trusts that the new fundamental techniques which are envisaged by Prime Vision, will lead to a further innovation in the recognition-chain of TNT”.
The project will provide an address reader, next to the development of new technical modules. This new address reader will be added as the last recognizer in the chain of TNT. The new recognizer will therefore have the name LCD (Last Coding Device).
Strategically this order will be very interesting for all our clients in the future as it will deliver enhancements to Prime Vision core-technology that are utilised on all our programs.
Marius (35) studied Biophysics in Bucharest and obtained his PhD at the University of Groningen. During that promotion assignment, he developed successful methods for automatic writer identification and verification, one of which actually forms the technological kernel of the Prime Vision Writer Identification system (WIE). Last years he worked as Postdoc Researcher during which he developed systems for document layout analysis and reading text, as well as a search engine for historic handwritten documents in the Cabinet of the Dutch Queen.
Marius will be assigned mainly to the “Kennisinvestering program”, where his task will be to develop technological improvements and technological extensions to our pattern recognition techniques and software library.
Crisplant systems installed for Australian air Express (AaE) have won major national and state awards within months of becoming fully operational. The state-of-the-art sortation systems were installed by Crisplant into new-build facilities in Melbourne and Sydney as part of AaE’s major ‘Building our Future’ investment programme.
Crisplant contracted Prime Vision to deliver advanced video-coding applications for processing parcels for which no EDI data has been received. The VCS application includes automatic ROI finding, auto rotation and auto zooming. Apart from this an extensive image archive was developed to store images that help improving Quality Control.
Prime Vision delivered engineering support and software licensing for the Mail Automation Project of New Caledonia Post (OPT). The project migrated OPT from manual mail processing to automation of letters.
The main assignment was the construction of a sortation platform that could serve as the foundation of OPT’s automation initiatives. The project comprised both machine and hand print address recognition performance in a format that can easily be managed by the post. Prime Vision was selected as a subcontractor for the hand printed address reader, after it appeared that this job was more difficult than initially anticipated.
Although the available developing time was limited and the recognition task challenging, Prime Vision managed to deliver an address reader on time and exactly to the specifications given. Unlike the first selected OCR vendor, the Prime Vision engineers managed to deal successfully with the restricted latency time, the great variety in address layouts and the unclear writing styles in New Caledonian addresses. The reader component makes use of the open CEN interface and applies state-of-the-art technology in order to read domestic addresses up to the street and house number level as well as foreign destinations.
TNT Post contracted Prime Vision to design, realize and rollout web services for a new retail system. The web based software is necessary to control specific parts of the User Interface of the system, controlling hardware on the retail system and communication with (different) back office systems.
With the use of web services, TNT can benefit of centralized software on web servers. There is no need to install software on the client systems, cutting the maintenance costs dramatically. Prime Vision is very pleased to participate in the program. On the one hand it confirms our diversification strategy in the Logistics business; on the other hand it perfectly fits into our latest efforts in web technology.
Recently the first two sorting centers at one of our major projects in Finland have been handed over to our client Itella. The sorting centers in Helsinki and Oulu have been successfully commissioned, inclusive high-performance OCR, centralized video-coding and image archiving. The centralized video-coding solution especially is an important novelty as the weather conditions in Finland do not always allow the data typists to travel to work. The new video-coding system enables Itella to re-route images from all sorting centers to one centralized datacenter in Helsinki.
With the hand over of these two sorting centers the project is half way. The next months the sorting centers of Tampere and Kuopio will be installed in close cooperation with our partner Siemens.
Due to economic circumstances the Courier and Parcel Logistics Asia 2009 Expo and Conference (19-21 May) has been postponed. Originally, our CEO Eddy Thans would act as guest speaker and moderator at the conference. In his presentation “Saving money through OCR and video coding” he intended to explain the audience in more detail that OCR and video coding solutions are much more than “just” ways to automate mail and parcels.
The new date for the CPL Asia is not yet fixed, but at Post Expo 2009 in Hannover (29 September-1 October 2009) you can enjoy another presentation of Eddy. If you don’t want to wait that long, please contact us directly as we are delighted to tell you more on this subject.
From 17 – 20 May 2009 we will be exhibiting at the National Postal Forum in Washington DC, USA. Come and visit our brand new booth, booth number 580.
Our very own Richard Hagen will be a guest speaker at the 2009 AIDC show in Veldhoven, The Netherlands. Richard will present some of the latest developments in automated recognition technologies that enable 100% identification even where there are no bar codes.
The show and conference takes place on 10th & 11th March 2009 at the NH Conference Centre Koningshof in Veldhoven. Prime Vision will also be present at Booth 011, so come along to find out more.
For more information on the show, just go to http://www.aidc-beurs.nl/
To reserve a meeting time with Richard and our team just email (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or call +31 15 219 2090.
We look forward to seeing you there.
News just in: The Moroccan Post Office has selected a Groupe Bull led consortium for the automation of its International Mail Center in Casablanca. Prime Vision is pleased to announce its role on the project as provider of postal address recognition engines.
The Groupe Bull consortium comprises AddressVision Inc. (AVI), its subsidiary specializing in automated mail solutions used to process more than 50% of all international mail, Prime Vision, and National Presort Inc. (NPI), a major mail sorting machinery manufacturer. More details will be annouced shortly...
Prime Vision will be present at the World Mail & Express Americas Conference scheduled for 24-25 February 2009 in Miami, USA. To arrange a meeting at the conference simply call +1 (609) 356 6893 or email (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Now in its 6th consecutive year, the World Mail & Express Americas returns to the United States after two years in Brazil and Mexico.
The last conference in Puerto Vallarta was the largest yet in the Americas with over 200 of the top mail and express executives from across North, Central & South America. A large European contingent represented over 10 countries from the continent whilst other delegates came from as far as Malaysia, Kenya & Saudi Arabia.
For more information on the conference, contact the organisers via their website at: http://www.triangle.eu.com/conferences/worldexpressamericas/
Come and see Prime Vision live in Chicago for ProMat 2009 - Booth 5435
We will be highlighting our high-performance automation and identification solutions, such as OCRlite and ParcelVision.
From January 12 - 15, 2009 the material handling and logistics industry will showcase the latest supply chain solutions at ProMat 2009, the Industry's premier trade show and educational conference.
With over 800 exhibits and over 100 educational sessions, ProMat is your one-stop destination manufacturing and distribution solutions.
| Show Sponsor: | The Material Handling Industry of America (MHIA) | |
| Dates: | January 12 - 15, 2009 | |
| Show Location: | McCormick Place South Chicago, IL, USA |
Prime Vision is pleased to report a very successful Post-Expo show this year in London. In addition to a very busy booth, Prime Vision presented at this years conference and also released a new White Paper highlighting the trends and innovations we see developing in the parcel & flats automation arena.
Prime Vision CEO Eddy Thans was interviewed by a TV crew at our show booth and we are pleased to include an excerpt here for you.
The 12th International Postal Technology Exhibition & Conference, POST-EXPO 2008, will be held at ExCeL London from 30th September thru 2nd October.
The three-day event annually attracts more than 4,000 top-level personnel from approximately 100 countries and is universally recognised as the world's premier event for the postal, mailing and parcel industry.
If you are automating or reorganising operations, you really cannot afford to miss Prime Vision at stand number 1342.
This year is set to be another exciting show for Prime Vision with a real emphasis in the market towards "open" systems for processing letters, flats and parcels (Prime Vision's approach for many years). Prime Visions' research and development machine has also been busy releasing new developments and innovations that will be presented at the show.
We have seen unprecedented interest in “open” and “supplier-independent” automation platforms for the postal industry and are convinced that ParcelVision 2.0 is the only solution on the market that truly delivers these benefits without limitation.
You can reserve a specific meeting time by calling Peggy Kosters at +31 15 219 2090, or email (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Eddy Thans, CEO Prime Vision is hosting this years' "Sorting And Moving of Parcels" segment of the Post-Expo Operations Conference. If you really want to get the inside-track on how parcel operations will look in the future, you really cannot afford to miss this conference. It is the crystal ball you’ve been looking for!
We look forward to seeing you in London!
Australia, June 2008 - Latest ParcelVision system fully installed and commissioned in less than three days.
There are few places on this planet that are further away from Holland than Australia, yet we have proven once again the ease of installation and integration benefits of our standard parcel recognition platform, ParcelVision, even this far away from our corporate homeland.
Ease of Integration and Installation
For integrators and customers alike, the fact that ParcelVision is a stable software platform that has been deployed at more than thirty projects worldwide does ensure consistency and ease of deployment, even though customer's requirements, sorters and host systems vary widely.
In this case our Project Manager was Rob Pieterse. Rob adds, "I would also like to emphasize the role of our professional project management services that ensure a smooth installation and commissioning!" And who could argue with that?!
Coming Soon: New Zealand
This multi-centre project will see us deploying more ParcelVision systems in Australia and also our first installation in New Zealand.
About Prime Vision
Prime Vision is a leading developer and supplier of automation and recognition solutions primarily for the mail & parcel logistics, financial and security markets. Prime Vision is one of the few OCR companies in the world that develops both machine-print and hand-writing recognition technologies in-house.
Everyday, millions of parcels, letters and forms are processed world-wide by Prime Vision solutions. Our award-winning, patented HYCR™ recognition technology is applied to many-varied client applications resulting in a highly customizable and high-performance recognition solution.
Prime Vision’s parcel and flats automation suite, ParcelVision, has been installed at more than 30 sorting centres spanning Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Prime Vision
(Americas) Mark A. Ryder
+1 (609) 356 6893
(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
or
(Corporate) Richard Hagen
+31 15 219 2090
(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Hot on the heels of our "web-enabled" video-coding announcement, Prime Vision is pleased to announce that another module of our award-winning ParcelVision parcel recognition platform has been "web-enabled".
 |
|
Eddy Thans, Prime Vision CEO, comments that the momentum and continuous development behind the ParcelVision platform is exciting for clients as much as it is for our development team, with enhancements being deployed around the world in rapid succession these past months. Introducing the new “Web-Enabled” Parcel Archive Module The new web-enabled module is our Parcel Archive that provides clients the capability to review parcel images and complete process history for every parcel handled at the sorting centre; a powerful tool for customer services and operations management alike.
Denmark first to go-live '
The first ParcelVision system has already been upgraded for a major client in Denmark and is now in operation. Previously, the Parcel Archive was accessible via dedicated terminals at the sorting centre only. The enhanced web-enabled Parcel Archive allows complete flexibility to securely access the archive utilizing a standard web-browser and the public internet meaning that all parts of the organization can now benefit from this important tracking data, not least of which, customer services.
About Prime Vision
Prime Vision is a leading developer and supplier of automation and recognition solutions primarily for the mail & parcel logistics, financial and security markets. Prime Vision is one of the few OCR companies in the world that develops both machine-print and hand-writing recognition technologies in-house. Everyday, millions of parcels, letters and forms are processed world-wide by Prime Vision solutions. Our award-winning, patented HYCR™ recognition technology is applied to many-varied client applications resulting in a highly customizable and high-performance recognition solution. Prime Vision’s parcel and flats automation suite, ParcelVision, has been installed at more than 30 sorting centres spanning Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Prime Vision
(Americas) Mark A. Ryder
+1 (609) 356 6893
(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
or
(Corporate) Richard Hagen
+31 15 219 2090
(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Delft, The Netherlands, May 26th 2008
Prime Vision is pleased to announce the development of a major upgrade to it’s award-winning solutions for mail and parcels automation that will enable systems to be securely operated from any location with broadband internet connectivity.
This development will enable postal and parcel operators to access unlimited processing resources during peak operations and pool available resources on a national and international basis. The bottom-line impact is faster response, minimize manual handling and significantly lower costs by eliminating wasted man-hours.
Incredible Operational Advantages, Flexibility & Scaleability
Let’s take one example; Video Coding. Prime Vision’s video-coding solution offers many innovations such as live and offline (batch-processing) modes as well as local coding at the sorting centre and/or a centralized video-coding pool for a region or nationwide network; the only current limitation to the system infrastructure is that dedicated video-coding client software is used on dedicated terminals in dedicated customer facilities.
Compare that the secure “web-enabled” video-coding scenario; potentially unlimited video-coding clients running on standard hardware on a standard internet browser. Video-coders can be offered home-based working contracts and resource effectively becomes unlimited; the fixed investment of running a 80-desk video-coding suite starts to look expensive and limited.
System To Be Deployed Nationwide in The Netherlands
The first “web-enabled” project is already underway. The national mail operator for The Netherlands, TNT Post, will start using their new web-enabled system nationwide before the Christmas holiday season 2008. About Prime Vision
Prime Vision is a leading developer and supplier of automation and recognition solutions primarily for the mail & parcel logistics, financial and security markets. Prime Vision is one of the few OCR companies in the world that develops both machine-print and hand-writing recognition technologies in-house.
Everyday, millions of parcels, letters and forms are processed world-wide by Prime Vision solutions. Our award-winning, patented HYCR™ recognition technology is applied to many-varied client applications resulting in a highly customizable and high-performance recognition solution.
Prime Vision’s parcel and flats automation suite, ParcelVision, has been installed at more than 30 sorting centres spanning Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Prime Vision (Americas)
Mark A. Ryder
+1 (609) 356 6893
(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
or
(Corporate) Richard Hagen
+31 15 219 2090
(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)