TEKLYNX Improves Flex-Strut Inc. Labeling Accuracy & Printing Speed

TEKLYNX Implementation Improved Labeling Accuracy and Printing Speed for Flex-Strut Inc.

TOPICS: ENTERPRISE LABEL MANAGEMENT, PRINT AUTOMATION, ÜRETİM

Flex-Strut Inc. is a US-based manufacturer of metal strut channel framing systems. Founded in 1994, Flex-Strut Inc. is known throughout the industry as a leader in customer service as it strives to provide quality framing systems and special fabrications to meet its customers’ exact specifications. In addition to manufacturing a full line of channel framing systems, the company provides its customer base of original equipment manufacturers with a variety of metal fittings, pipe clamps, brackets, braces, fasteners, strut nuts and hardware. Flex-Strut Inc. prides itself on its ability to fabricate products to its customers’ needs and ship them in time to meet even the most challenging deadline.

Since 2006, Flex-Strut Inc. has successfully leveraged TEKLYNX label design solution, LABELVIEW, to design and print labels at its manufacturing facility in Warren, Ohio. However, as customer demand has increased over time, Flex-Strut Inc. was looking to increase automation to improve workflow and consistency throughout its production facility. Specifically, the company sought to improve label consistency as its current labeling operation included manual steps that exposed the company to labeling inconsistencies.

“With LABELVIEW, we would produce and update each label for every sales order we processed, and the process to reference thousands of different label files would take longer than it would to actually enter the sales order in our system,” states Flex-Strut Inc. Director of Information Technology Terry Kakavros. “If, for example, one of our operators would forget to enter something, we would run into consistency issues with our labels.”

Because its current labeling system relied on production operators to manually update the customer purchase order number, product weight, product quantity and other details, printed labels were vulnerable to inaccuracies due to human error.

In many instances, the operators were manually entering data that already existed in the ERP system. Flex-Strut Inc. was looking to remove manual steps from the labeling process to eliminate the room for human error and improve labeling consistency.

In addition to improving labeling accuracy, Flex-Strut Inc. was looking for a barcode labeling software solution that could:

• Eliminate its labeling bottleneck resulting from manual operations.
• Easily integrate with its existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System.
• Efficiently support its multi-user environment: One Flex-Strut Inc. employee is responsible for creating labels, but five different employees access and print these labels.
• Manage a vast number of products: With LABELVIEW, Flex-Strut Inc. relied on thousands of label files to properly label approximately 4,000 different products.
• Automate its label printing process.
• Provide the ability to print labels to an increased number of printers, both faster and in greater volume.

Given these labeling requirements, Flex-Strut’s Director of Information Technology recognized an opportunity to revisit the company’s current barcode labeling solution to see if modifications to the labeling environment could drive improvements in labeling accuracy and speed.

Solution

Kakavros partnered with TEKLYNX and quickly determined that TEKLYNX Enterprise Label Management Solution, SENTINEL, combined with TEKLYNX label design solution, CODESOFT, would meet the company’s labeling requirements while generating desired improvements in labeling accuracy and speed.

“We were eager to help long-time TEKLYNX customer Flex-Strut Inc. upgrade its barcode labeling software solution,” commented Robert Lenski, TEKLYNX Solutions Engineer. “We were confident TEKLYNX SENTINEL print automation combined with TEKLYNX CODESOFT label design would meet Flex-Strut Inc.’s labeling requirements while delivering on its goals of faster and more accurate printing.”

SENTINEL is a label printing automation software that would give Flex-Strut Inc. the ability to centrally print to hundreds of printers at the same time. It would also position Flex-Strut Inc. to support long-term growth with its ability to manage up to 1,000 printers with little to no manual maintenance once configured. SENTINEL would also easily integrate with the company’s existing ERP system.

CODESOFT is an enterprise-level label design software that would allow Flex-Strut Inc. the ability to print the necessary labels with minimal human interaction because it also integrates with existing ERP, MRP or host applications. It too would position Flex-Strut Inc. to support long-term growth with its capability to support multiple production lines and facilities.

TEKLYNX supported Flex-Strut Inc. during what proved to be a quick and seamless implementation process. “Following a label design demonstration from our team, including instruction on how to design labels using database connections, Flex-Strut Inc. was able to easily implement the upgraded system using the provided server specifications,” said Lenski. “Flex-Strut Inc. knew exactly what they wanted and our team worked quickly to deliver a solution that was implemented by Flex-Strut Inc. within approximately one week.”

Results

Flex-Strut Inc. revisited its labeling environment in an effort to improve labeling accuracy and speed. Selecting TEKLYNX Enterprise Label Management Solution, SENTINEL, combined with TEKLYNX label design solution, CODESOFT, allowed them to do just that.

Flex-Strut Inc.’s successful implementation of SENTINEL and CODESOFT positioned it to gain efficiencies and control of its labeling process. The addition of print automation increased Flex-Strut Inc.’s labeling accuracy by 25%. The company was also able to eliminate its labeling bottleneck, resulting in an 100% increase in label printing speed.

“Prior to our SENTINEL implementation, we would produce and update each label for every sales order we processed and the process itself would take longer than actually entering the sales order in our system,” commented Kakavros. “SENTINEL enables us to use our ERP system to print labels, which means labeling is no longer a bottleneck.”

In addition to the tangible benefits provided by its CODESOFT and SENTINEL implementation, Flex-Strut Inc. found the TEKLYNX team to be knowledgeable, responsive and easy to work with, especially when the company experienced technical challenges with its virtual machine migration. “We ran into technical difficulties which resulted in label printing downtime and the TEKLYNX team got our system back up as quickly as humanly possible,” stated Kakavros.

For TEKLYNX Americas General Manager Doug Niemeyer, customer feedback such as this is the true measure of success. “Being a software solutions provider doesn’t start and stop with the software implementation,” states Niemeyer. "The TEKLYNX implementation simply marks the beginning of a long-term partnership during which we partner with companies to make sure our solutions make those companies work better over time, no matter what challenge is thrown their way.”

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