When an employee at Columbia Records saw the potential offered by mailroom automation, a true success story was born. Fifty years on, OPEX Corporation has bold new ambitions for Europe.
You give your age away if you remember the days of excitedly sending off coins in envelopes to buy items that would arrive at your front door not less than a month later. Those were the days of mailrooms with multiple staff, individually processing and ‘fulfilling’ – as we have nowadays been trained to call it – each customer order.
In that context, imagine how busy the 1970s mailroom at Columbia Records in Indiana must have been. When employee Al Stevens was tasked with finding ways to automate the manual mail processing system as a way of speeding up operations, he discovered an innovative New Jersey-based company called OPEX, which was pioneering equipment to open mail automatically and feed it via conveyor belt to seated workers.
Early Adopter to Owner
A visionary early adopter of the technology, Al Stevens eventually became sales manager at OPEX. Fast forward a few years and he and his wife took a leap of faith on buying the company outright when the opportunity arose.
The rest is history. This year the company celebrates its 50th anniversary, remaining a family-owned and run enterprise and still manufacturing its own equipment within the United States.
With some important additions: OPEX Corporation is now a great deal more than a specialist in document and mail automation, having grown over the last 15 years into a major international provider of warehouse automation systems.
Further growth in the UK and Europe is now a key objective for OPEX Corporation, having appointed Manchester-based Mike Morgan as Business Development Manager EMEA in September last year to cover a broad territory including the UK, Western Europe, the Nordics and Middle East. A Mechanical Engineering graduate with a hinterland in logistics to bring to the table, Mike is excited about the road ahead.
“I like to say OPEX is the biggest brand you’ve never heard of,” he enthuses. The numbers back up his assertion about the company’s reach. It boasts over 1600 employees, and counts more than half of the Fortune 100 companies among its customers, with 345 issued patents to endorse its credentials as a bonafide innovator.
Need-for-speed synergies between document mail automation and warehouse operational needs made the development of technology in the latter a logical move for OPEX, he says.
Speed, Versatility and Flexibility
“All of our technology ultimately derives from the document mail sortation side, and that’s where our understanding of speed comes from,” he explains. “If you look at the throughputs we have achieved for mail opening, the capability numbers are almost scarily high, and that ethos has carried over into our warehouse technology. The original innovations have been adapted to be able to move parcels and bigger items, for ecommerce and similar scenarios. Speed is rooted in the technology.”
A strong example of OPEX postroom automation capability is provided by the Mail Matrix, which can sort a wide variety of envelopes intermixed as well as small parcels to over a thousand sort destinations. There is no need to presort by size, thickness, or any other criteria; items may be dropped on the feed conveyor or via the automated feeder. Highly efficient iBOTs – intelligent wireless robots – facilitate fast and efficient mail sorting, recharging as they go. Each acts independently of the others to ensure the system remains up even if one of the iBOTs needs to be removed for repair.
It is this flexibility and versatility which informs the warehouse automation portfolio, targeting the key areas of storage, retrieval, sorting and fulfilment and with products to optimise operations in all areas.
This year, Mike Morgan is particularly excited by the potential of Sure Sort with Xtract, which builds on the sortation capability of the company’s popular (over 1400 installed worldwide) Sure Sort and Sure Sort X products to compile a package enabling the sorting, retrieval and removal of completed orders.
OPEX Xtract is an optional feature for Sure Sort X that automates the order takeaway process. The Xtract iBOTs retrieve totes of up to 30lb (13.6kg) containing sorted orders before dispensing them into the proper container, including shipping boxes, for downstream processing.
“We’re very excited about this for two reasons,” he explains. “First, no technology out there can do what it can do, so we are the first to market with this kind of technology. We can sort, retrieve and pack orders automatically, taking out multiple steps and operations from the traditional process. Second, it can also be tacked onto any existing system. So if, for instance, you already have a goods to person system, or you deploy manual picking, or you don’t have the space capability or you simply aren’t ready, for whatever reason, to make the investment, Sure Shot with Xtract is a great option for you. In terms of versatility and bang for your buck, this piece of tech is very, very exciting.”
A further differential highlighted by Mike Morgan is that the company is vertically integrated within the US. “All of our manufacturing and shipping is done in-house, from ordering parts to installing on-site with our own OPEX truck,” he says. As part of the international expansion initiative, he does not rule out exploration of a similar supply base within Europe, perhaps allied to working with selected partners in certain territories to help grow the footprint.
His objectives are clear enough. “To have a site in every territory or to get a foothold within a territory. Existing deployment within a territory matters to new customers, it gives them that element of comfort, the confidence that we’re here to stay. We understand that – after all, they are making a massive investment in many cases.”
Values of Care and Integrity
He believes the true ‘magic sauce’ of OPEX is its integrity to its customers, suppliers and staff, which springs from the Christian values of the Stevens family.
“The values of care and integrity really do soak through,” he confirms. “It’s very refreshing to be a part of that.” How do these values manifest themselves for customers?
“In our support of sites, we give everything that we possibly can to help you as a customer be successful. Put it this way: we’d much rather over-support than under-support. We don’t walk away from projects, we’ve never end-of-lifed a machine, and if we want to stop supporting a product for whatever reason, we will be there to help guide you.”
He compares the process to buying a car, another object that you are buying to use every single day. “Yes, you can buy a very cheap car without extensive aftersales support, but it’s much more likely to be regularly out of use to you because it’s in the garage being repaired. The model with the strong aftersales backup will be a much smarter choice in the long run. With our warehouse automation technology, it’s important to remember that you only buy it once, but you are then using it every day for the purpose intended.
“Our customers’ success is our success. I say to them: ‘you’re not just buying equipment, you’re buying us.’”
