All About Dimensioning and Cubing Systems
What are Dimensioning Systems and Cubing Systems?
Is there a difference?
Short answer is: no, there is no difference! For the long answer, read on.
Supply Chain Managers and those persons who work in freight forwarding, shipping, transport, and logistics will all tell you that knowledge of the precise cubic dimensions (LWH) of individual items that move through the supply chain is a critical factor in managing and optimising their operations.
Space in warehouse bins, racks, shelves, conveyors, or in trucks and trailers or airplanes or ships or shipping containers – you name it – is all measured by the cubic dimensions that an item takes up, the respective length, width and height of an item.
Every stock keeping unit (SKU), every parcel, every pallet, every individual piece of freight needs to be measured – and weighed – and this cubic data (and weight) stored against the unique identifier of the item – these days usually a barcode in either 1-d or 2-D format.
The cubic measurements can be taken either by hand using a tape measure or can be determined automatically using an automated measurement device that is known typically as either…
…A dimensioning system or a cubing system.
Cubing and Dimensioning are the same thing. The terms are interchangeable. The various devices determine the cubic dimensions – the L W H – of the item they are measuring.
But what if the item is irregular ion shape – like a witches hat, for example? Then the automated devices will determine the smallest theoretical cuboidal (six sided box) shape the irregular shaped item would fit into. This is helpful for automated packaging techniques, by the way.
But the cubing or dimensioning devices all perform the same task. Through lasers or lidar or ultrasonic or time of flight sensors they measure and determine the “cube” or “dimensions” of the item – the length width height.
Here in Australia people who worked for Toll in the past and even these days still use the term “check weigh cube” instead of dimension weigh scan (DWS). They might say the check weigh cube machine. And so on. The check part is the barcode scanning that checks the unique ID of the item, its barcode number. In DWS the S is the scan of the barcode.
So, if you are after a dimensioning system or a cubing system – they are the same thing! – you have come to the right place at NWI Group.
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