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“LABELVIEW has improved our entire manufacturing process.”
Bestway Products Co. of Salt Lake City has been manufacturing and distributing industrial cleaning products for 46 years. Its customers include janitorial operations for commercial and industrial companies, as well as virtually all of the schools in the state of Utah. These customers rely on Bestway Products for a wide range of cleaning equipment, such as auto scrubbers, mops, and brooms, as well as liquid cleaners. Although Bestway Products is a distributor for hundreds of products, it manufactures its own line of cleaners, disinfectants, solvents, waxes, and wax strippers.
The company sells all of its products directly to its customers, shipping products through United Parcel Service (UPS), common carrier or on their own delivery vans. It also sells through a retail store located at the manufacturing plant.
Because of the nature of the business, it’s important for Bestway Products to be able to produce its chemical products in small runs. This reduces inventory, gives greater shelf life for their customers and ensures that products do not have to be discarded or labels changed if there is a regulatory change. Since most of the products are packaged into quart or gallon containers, with some bulk shipments in 55-gallon drums, space is also a consideration. It is both a hard dollar savings and a safety advantage to have as little finished goods on hand as possible.
When Cody Beckstead, head of manufacturing, joined Bestway Products, the company was ordering blank, uncut label stock and had an in-house printing operation. The printing press required a long and complicated setup so labels were run in large quantities, but the printing was low quality. Commented Beckstead, “The printing press was very temperamental. Sometimes, if things weren’t working, the only thing to do was to give up and try it again in the morning. After all that, the labels were the most unprofessional thing I’d ever seen.”
Since Bestway Products uses about 150 different labels, the expense and inconvenience of keeping an adequate supply of labels on hand became unmanageable. Complicating the situation, Bestway Products was also ordering preprinted containers for certain products. This expensive process presented a storage nightmare since hundreds, or even thousands of empty containers took up valuable warehouse space while waiting to be filled.
"We used to order gallon jugs and quart containers that had silk screened labels. It would take two weeks to get them from the manufacturer and then we’d have to warehouse them," continued Beckstead. "It used to cost a dollar and two cents each for the pre-printed bottles. The blanks that we buy today are only half that much and the label is only 13 cents."
That’s all changed now. Beckstead threw out the old way of doing things and, along with it, a lot of headaches. Now Bestway Products uses LABELVIEW barcode label design software from TEKLYNX to print labels on demand.
Beckstead completely revamped the manufacturing labeling process, changing it from a large batch print and inventory process to a print-on-demand. Working together with a TEKLYNX reseller, they developed a new approach that requires only two label size formats. Using these two formats, both of which have Bestway Products' logo preprinted with the LABELVIEW software, the company is able to meet all of its labeling needs.
The labeling system consists of a Microsoft Windows-based personal computer running LABELVIEW. The move to on-demand labeling has substantially reduced costs and increased flexibility. “The LABELVIEW system is the centerpiece of our entire manufacturing area,” said Beckstead. “Now we can do shorter runs and print just the quantity that we need.”
The entire process has been streamlined. When an order is received in the front office, a delivery ticket, will call, or ship-to ticket is generated based on the delivery method. The ticket is sent back to manufacturing, which prepares the order and at the same time produces the required number of labels.
Beckstead simply selects the specific product (wax stripper, for instance), the unit of measure (gallon), and then runs the printing job. The individual labels include the preprinted border and logo, the product name, unit of measure and any disclaimers, safety documentation or usage instructions required, as well as a barcode that includes the item identification. “The system is great. I don’t have to warehouse any pre-printed labels and I know that when I select the label, everything will be included,” continued Beckstead. LABELVIEW is also used to print labels for 55-gallon drums, as well as shipping containers and boxes, to further simplify materials handling.
Beckstead, who had little background in computers and no label design experience, developed all of the labels himself. “I had a little CAD training in high school and I found LABELVIEW very easy to work with. I did need some technical support when I recently upgraded my Microsoft Windows, but the TEKLYNX support people were right there and helped me through the process.”
Now that Bestway Products has been using LABELVIEW for over three years, there is a high comfort level with the entire labeling process. About 150 different label/size designs are in use and the labeling process has become automatic. Beckstead updates designs as needed and uses the LABELVIEW software’s security features to ensure that he is the only one authorized to make changes.
“LABELVIEW has improved our entire manufacturing process. It lets us control both our container and our label inventory and makes it easier for us to do small manufacturing runs. It’s exactly what we needed,” concluded Beckstead.
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