Lobster Grader price-cut 50% by Know Tech Environmental Inc.!

Truro, NS, April 1, 2008 - Today Know Tech Environmental (KTE) released a new, basic version of the popular Visual Sorter System for grading lobsters at a greatly reduced price. “We took the essential features from our higher priced, stand-alone Visual Sorter and built them into a program that runs on a typical office PC machine” said James Shand, President of KTE. “Named the Visigrader, the result is a system cost reduction of up to 50% for shops with 2 grading positions. In view of the current slump in lobster markets, lobster buyers and dealers should welcome this news.”

The Visual Sorter is a simplified method of grading lobsters using colour to indicate the destination crate. When a lobster is placed on or removed from a digital scale, a colour appears on a screen to indicate which destination crate to place the lobster in. Each crate is assigned a color corresponding to the weight range for the crate. All lobsters that show green go in the green crate. Those that show blue go in the blue crate. And so on...

Lobster dealers find that using the Visual Sorter reduces costs, improves accuracy, is easier to learn and reduces worker stress, making a happier work environment. Grading by colour is easier and more accurate than grading by digital weight alone. Detecting color only involves the eyes while converting a digital weight to a particular destination crate engages the whole brain. Thus color grading is less tiring for experienced operators, resulting in fewer mistakes in grading and better product quality.

New or inexperienced employees find it is much easier to learn to grade lobsters using the colour system. Side-by-side tests have shown that employees with 1 hour training on the Visual Sorter can grade lobsters as fast and as accurately as employees with years of experience using the old method.

Different customers may have differing grade requirements. Shifting the grading weight ranges can be very confusing under the old method, as the mind has to learn to use a new set of weight values. With the Visual Sorter, changing weight grades is simplified. Different weight ranges can be saved within the system, by customer name. A customer name is selected on the computer screen, assigning a new set of weight ranges to the different crate colours. Then the operator resumes the same process as before: all lobsters that show green go in the green crate. Those that show blue go in the blue crate. And so on... The result is more accurate grading, reduced costs, happier customers and happier employees.

Using the Visual Sorter, one person can grade lobsters about as fast as two people using the old traditional method. With the Visual Sorter, a crate of lobsters is placed on the digital scale. As each lobster is removed from the crate, the Visual Sorter instantly indicates by color which destination crate the lobster should be placed in. The person grading simply observes the color and places the lobster in the crate associated with that color. This cuts labor costs by half.

Lobster grading the old way involves two people and a digital scale. One person removes a lobster from the supply crate and places it on the digital scale. The other person reads the weight on the scale, removes the lobster from the scale and places it in one of several destination crates, depending on the weight of the lobster.

Tests have shown that labour productivity (pounds of lobsters per man-hour) improves by 70 – 100 %.

Two workers per scale should be able to grade about 10 crates of lobsters per hour. At a pay rate of $15 per hour, the cost will be $30.00, or $3.00 per crate. Using the Visual Sorter with one worker per scale, one person should be able to grade at least 8.5 crates per hour. At a pay rate of $15 per hour the cost will be $1.76 per crate, a saving of $1.24 per crate or over 40% savings. The new version of the Visual Sorter, the Visigrader, costs $1,995 for two scales, plus delivery, taxes and installation.

The Visigrader software works with existing scales with a printer connection. One or two scales are connected to the office PC computer by a cable to the printer port. The digital scales continue to operate normally. An ordinary TV is used to display colour changes at each scale location. A TV is mounted on a wall-bracket, in view of the person using each scale. The TV(s) are connected to the office PC computer by a coax TV cable. The TV(s) are left on all the time to avoid damage by the cold, wet conditions in most grading rooms.

The Visual Sorter Lobster Grading System is available from Know Tech Environmental Inc.

Know Tech Environmental Inc
P. O. Box 482, Truro, N.S. Canada
B2N 5C7

For further information contact James Shand, President.
Voice:1-800-890-8608 or 1-902-893-7138
email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
FAX: 902-893-7640.