Problem
A customer was batch printing labels sent to them by their customer as PDF’s. The problem with this is that all of the labels had to be printed in advance and then the operators had to sort through the stacks of labels to find the correct one to put on the product. This took time and was very prone to errors.
Solution
Create a mobile printing station using a PC Series Newcastle Mobile Power Cart, 3 ZD621 Desktop Printers, a Zebra DS3678 Barcode scanner, and custom software to extract label data from the PDF documents and allow for scanned part numbers to print out the correct colored label.
Story
The best way forward was to print the labels on demand as they were needed. This singulates the process, so that only one label was printed exactly when it was needed. The problem is that the data was locked in PDF documents and the end customer would not send the label data any other way. So the team at EMP wrote a custom program to extract the needed data from the PDF documents and store it in a database. Then the system uses Bartender and more custom code to print the correct labels when the product is scanned. Adding a layer of complexity to the solution, three different colors of labels were required by the end customer. So, the solution has 3 label printers, each with a different color of label, and the custom code sends the label to the printer that has the right color stock.
