3 WAYS TO REDUCE WASTE IN YOUR ENTERPRISE LABEL PRINTING ENVIRONMENT

Originally appeared on The Human Readable Blog, by TEKLYNX.

Partner Blog BY: NICK RECHT / TEKLYNX

Every business is unique. At TEKLYNX, we understand that with every unique business comes unique labeling requirements. Sometimes the labeling process becomes too complex for standalone applications to handle, which is where enterprise label printing software comes into play. With enterprise label management solutions, your complex labeling process is streamlined to a simple set of steps that is easy for your team to master, saving you time and money and reducing waste in your labeling environment.

Within this blog, we’ll outline three ways to reduce waste in your enterprise label printing environment.

3 Ways to Reduce Waste in Your Enterprise Label Printing Environment:

1. INTEGRATE SYSTEMS AND AUTOMATE LABEL PRINTING

Print automation can be defined as, “a centralized technology that replaces the manual process of triggering a print job within a labeling environment.” With enterprise label printing software, you can enable printing out of your ERP, WMS, or other business systems, including custom applications. Your business system already holds the variable data such as product information, lot numbers, shipping addresses, packing lists, order numbers, and more. By integrating your label printing system with your ERP system, such as Oracle and SAP, you can expect reduced time for eliminating the need to manually enter data at print time, reduce physical waste due to potential errors, and reduced costs that are associated with time and physical labels.

TEKLYNX print automation solution, SENTINEL allows you to:

Completely automate your label printing process
Print to an unlimited number of printers
Initiate printing directly from any business system

Set up your barcode label printing system to monitor a database to populate variable data and automatically print barcode labels without any human interaction necessary. The key to spending less time interacting with your label designer and reducing waste is fully automating your enterprise label printing process with your business system.

What does this look like in an enterprise label printing system?

1. Add data to business system

2. Business system adds information pertinent for labeling to a table in the back-end database

3. Print automation utility recognized new data, populates it into a template, and sends it to the printer

4. Barcode labels print!

2. MAINTAIN RECORDS OF THE LABEL DESIGN & PRINT PROCESS

A paperless label approval process can reduce potential risks that a physical process brings, while also reducing time spent, saving on resources, and eliminating waste. A paperless label approval process is a file-based process, both digital and secure. This means that while you’re eliminating the space where your current labels are physically stored, you’re also saving time throughout the approval steps. Requests are sent through email and able to be viewed without downloading. Label files are stored in a central repository where the approver can access, approve, deny, and add comments. All revisions and feedback are in one central location, improving efficiency and eliminating room for error.

Having records of every step in your process can assist with label traceability throughout your supply chain while also preventing future errors from occurring. If an incorrect label is printed, you can identify when where and why the incorrect label was printed. Then, you can identify who approved the label design and who made it. Having this kind of visibility into which products are affected and how to identify them helps tremendously in terms of potential recalls.

Reducing labeling errors is key to reducing waste in enterprise label printing. Enforcing a label approval process ensures incorrect labels never enter production. TEKLYNX label security and traceability software, LABEL ARCHIVE, enables a secure label approval process and a central label storage location.

3. CENTRALLY MANAGE YOUR ENTERPRISE LABEL PRINTING ENVIRONMENT

For companies with many locations, stringent labeling requirements, and a lean IT staff, browser-based label printing can simplify enterprise label printing across all locations. A browser-based printing interface saves time over installing individual label design software on every workstation. Local installations are eliminated, and authorized users log into a webpage to print labels from anywhere, simultaneously cutting costs and reducing risk of error. Having one centralized, unified solution to handle label design, approval, printing, and reporting can help organize and reduce waste throughout your entire labeling process.

To simplify your enterprise label printing environment, implement cloud-hosted label printing. Cloud-hosted printing completely eliminates the need to manage and maintain infrastructure for a local server, the cutting edge security protects your business, and you’re able to rapidly enable on-demand label printing at new locations with maximum scalability. Not having to worry about updating a local server’s OS or handling unexpected outages can reduce waste in your enterprise label printing environment.

Enterprise label printing software case study

One of America’s largest independent manufacturers of plastic tubing, Freelin-Wade, has more than 4,000 stock items and infinite custom products that require proper labeling. Their existing end user interface was confusing, resulting in high error rates and increased customer returns. No integration between their label design & printing software and their existing business systems also was opening the door for errors.

Freelin-Wade was looking for one centralized enterprise label printing software solution that would combine their current disparate systems. They decided on TEKLYNX CENTRAL, which combined the proven technology of TEKLYNX barcode label design, printing, and label tracking and approval software into a single solution that exceeded their original goals.

After installation, the team at Freelin-Wade saw a 50% reduction in labeling errors, resulting in an equal decrease in expensive customer returns. The label preview reinforced a key tenet of lean manufacturing – visualization. The visual cue helps users make the right choice, and average daily label waste dropped from 20% to less than 1%. The centralized system management also led to faster installations, upgrades, and label definition for each workstation.