01Inbound and the bulk problem
Parcels enter a hub the way transport delivers them: in cages, sacks and vehicle loads, mixed and unsorted. The first equipment decision is not the sorter; it is tipping that bulk flow onto a line without damaging it, and converting it — via stack separation and a singulator — into the gapped single file every later stage consumes. Hubs that underinvest here spend the difference on operators stationed along the line, untangling the flow by hand, forever.
02Measure, identify, sort
Single file established, the parcel crosses the measuring section: a dynamic DWS captures dimensions and weight, and a scanning tunnel reads the label wherever it faces. The record now holds everything the rest of the building needs — billing data for the customer, routing data for the sorter, planning data for the load. The sorter — in a hub of any scale, a cross-belt frame, linear or loop by building shape — executes the routing: route, carrier and service splits discharging into chutes, cages and gaylords at the density the network requires.
Exceptions are a designed flow, not an afterthought: no-reads and out-of-gauge parcels divert to a manual station with their captured data attached, resolved by people, and re-inducted — instead of silently joining the wrong outbound vehicle.
03Loading: where the flow ends
Sorted parcels travel take-away conveyors to their doors, where telescopic conveyors carry them into the waiting vehicles to the loading face. Where loads are palletised rather than loose-loaded, the dock's pallet measuring point records each pallet and the GS400 can verify the finished vehicle's fill. The parcel that entered as bulk leaves as a measured, routed, recorded unit of freight — and the hub's systems know its size, weight, identity and vehicle.
That is the whole arc Goodscan equips: separation and singulation, DWS measurement, scanning, sortation, conveying and loading, from one range and one engineering team. The sortation system page details the middle stages; bring us your hub's volumes and building plan and we will draw the flow for your site.
A note on phasing, because few hubs can stop the world to rebuild: this flow installs in slices. Measurement and singulation go in around the live operation first; the sorter follows in a planned shutdown window; loading equipment changes last, door by door. The end state is the integrated flow above, but the path to it never requires the hub to miss a peak — the phasing plan is part of the layout proposal, not an afterthought.