Sierra RapidScan Ruler

Sierra's Patented Ruler for Lumber Tally.

Sierra RapidScan Ruler is designed to scan product dimension to tally quickly and accurately. By shooting a single laser-beam the operator measures, counts, and computes lumber data. No manual keypad entry is required during the end-tally operation; the system is practical because measurement and calculations are done very quickly once the laser-beam is fired.

The Sierra RapidScan ruler is made of stainless steel flexible material; it is 1-inch wide and 24-inches long. Ruler is divided into 1-inch sections. It has 2 sides:

Front: Consists of actual ruler markings

Back: Includes Species, Grades, Thickness, and Length data.  These values can be scanned into the system.

How does it work?

Operator holds the ruler against the lumber width, he aims and fires a laser beam from the mobile device where the width falls between the marks on the ruler. Board-footage is calculated, 1 piece is added to the total, and all other required computations are performed. All of this happens in about a second.

 
End-TalEnd-Tally operations are not only faster but they are more accurate with the Sierra RapidScan ruler. Older "read and score" methods tend to cause more errors and they are much slower. These systems consisted of a ruler attached to a device to visually read and then manually score a value-- increasing the risk to make mistakes while reading and typing numbers.   

Sierra DigiTally Way 1. Hold ruler against the lumber board 2. Aim and Fire the Laser	The Outdated Way 1. Hold Ruler (and handheld) against the lumber board 2. Look at the ruler, visually read the measurement 3. Look at the Computer Keypad 4. Decide to Round up or down (i.e. 2¾ = 3) 5. Enter the Measurement by hand

In Sierra DigiTally, operator's eyes remain at the lumber board and the ruler, and his hand remains on the trigger.  This is basically a firing action.  Therefore, the operation is much faster, as well as more accurate. Tallying with RapidScan does not require as much concentration since hand-eye coordination movements are simple and minimized. In other systems multiple hand-eye movements are needed just to take a single measurement,  errors do happen when worker loses concentration.   

Manual data-entry is a 2-Sigma or 3-Sigma operation (~ 68% accuracy) whereas scanned input qualifies as a 6-Sigma ( ~98% accuracy).   Overall operation requires less energy and concentration in Sierra DigiTally which increases worker productivity over a period of time.             Next >>