From ERP directly to the right-sized label – Automation simplified installers' daily work

A company manufacturing door assemblies for public transport hit a wall. One of their major customers announced that they required four new product numbers with barcodes in addition to the existing information on current product labels. The challenge was the limited size of the label combined with a vast amount of data.

The company's general ERP software and its reporting tool worked great for basic reporting, such as printing dispatch lists and product tables, but millimeter-precise positioning of labels was simply too cumbersome with them. Help was needed to squeeze the amount of data and barcodes onto a small label.

We started to untangle the knot by ensuring that label printing would continue to be effortless for production employees. Therefore, data transfer and label printing had to remain as automatic as possible. As a solution, the report from the ERP system was directed straight to a local workstation. Kroko Autoprint's integration tool detects in the background when a new report is created, captures the information for processing, and initiates the printing of the correct label template. The cooperation between the software and the printer ensures that the installer receives labels of the correct size in an easily manageable format.

Thanks to Kroko's easy-to-use label editor and convenient data processing tools, the solution was implemented quickly. From the first meeting, testing was underway within a couple of days, and actual production implementation took a mere two weeks. Although creating label templates and fine-tuning remained completely in the company's own hands, production employees do not need to worry about layouts or IT – they just take the desired production order report for processing, and the system handles the rest.

Once the solution was proven to be functional, it was natural to explore other possibilities that came with the Kroko Autoprint program. The company recognized the flexibility of Autoprint tables and began to customize their own tables and printing templates for each workstation. Today, the system handles labels for internal production control, markings for the testing department, warehouse labels, and batch and order numbers that go all the way to the customer. Markings for wires and cables in the electrical cell, as well as unique identifications related to various configurations, were also cleverly added.

Management appreciates it when tasks are simple for employees in their daily work, and time does not need to be spent on new employee training due to label printing. Production development is satisfied when all changes remain in their own hands without slow IT projects. And most importantly: customers receive exactly the personalized information they wanted, with a smart and consistent appearance.