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Case Study # 1:
Electrical Circuit Breaker Labeling
Background
This Customer was building electrical circuit breakers that were identified with various product diagrams, product rating labels, UL serialization markings, and hand stamped serialized tracking data. There were approximately 2300 different products with each product containing from 2 to 5 different labels. Labels were pre-printed and inventoried at annual quantities to derive a competitive price. Before we were involved, the customer was experiencing an average exceeding $12,000.00 per month in mislabeled product and or rework due to mistakenly applied labels or markings.
Project Description
After completing a cost-out walk through' and studying the results, we designed a turnkey labeling system to generate a khan ban bar code label to identify the product and to drive the assembly process thereby avoiding misidentified product. The bar code was further used to drive a print on demand labeling system to allow the elimination of pre printed product labels thus eliminating expensive inventory and the costs associated with ordering, storing and finding the appropriate product labels when it became time to label the product. Our design of an integrated hardware / software turnkey system was utilized to calculate product serial numbers as part of the product label to eliminate the messy and labor intensive job of hand stamping lot numbers onto the product. An integrated plant wide database was created to drive the entire system thereby insuring correct data on product and carton labels.
Savings And Benefits
Total annual savings achieved with this project was $ 2.6 million with a first year savings of $ 520,000. Total implementation cost was $ 205,000 yielding an ROI of 12.6:1 with a one month payback.
Case Study # 2: Private Labeling of Generic Circuit Breakers
Background
This customer’s product is built and tested in Puerto Rico. The customer was negotiating with an Asian Marketing Partner to re-identify and repackage the product for sale in Asia. A key to this marketing approach was to re-label the 'US built' product with Japanese (Kanji) labels for sale in the Asian marketplace. The Japanese 'repackaging company' was planning to establish local sources for producing Japanese pre printed labels to be used to re-identify the product received from Puerto Rico. This approach entailed removing old labels and re-identifying the product in advance of a customer order to achieve the needed '0 week' lead-time demanded by the Asian market. To satisfy this requirement, the customer was planning to
re-identify and stock / replenish a 26 week forecasted supply to overcome the manufacturing and transit time from Puerto Rico to Singapore.
Project Description
After doing an in depth on site product review and needs analysis with our US customer for his client in Japan, we documented the requirements, traveled to the Singapore manufacturing site and implemented a project to satisfy the final customer’s needs. We designed and manufactured a turnkey integrated labeling system consisting of a single computer and 16 thermal printers pre loaded with specially designed label stock.
This approach coupled with an integrated multilingual database and our custom software allowed the 'repackaged' to receive generic product identified with a simple bar code and no other labels. The bar code was then used to drive the print on demand labeling system and allow the elimination of pre printed product labels thus eliminating the need to re label the product. This design approach eliminated expensive inventory and the costs associated with ordering, storing and finding the appropriate labels for the product. It also provided for tracking of calculated product serial numbers as part of the product label to provide traceability. The labeling system allows inexperienced employees from Malaysia, Singapore and Japan to scan print, identify, package and carton label the product without special knowledge regarding the actual product.
Savings and Benefits
Total annual savings achieved with this project was $ 3.2 million with a first year savings of $ 1.6 million. Total implementation cost was $ 265,000 yielding an ROI of 12:1 with a one month payback.
Case Study # 3: Re-engineer / Consolidate Label
Background
This customer’s product labels required color-coding by five product 'tiers' and 3 different logos. The customer design approach required a print on demand system utilizing 87 printers or EXTENSIVE down time and labor to change label stocks.
Project Description
After analysis of the customer’s label blank design and requirements, we were able to redesign the label blank and implement a successful system with 29 printers and minimal stock changing. By combining product labels into a 'BOM' strip design label cost was reduced by 42% . Significant inventory reduction was accomplished due to the reduced number of product labels to be inventoried.
Savings and Benefits
Total annual savings achieved with this project was $ 248,000 with a first year savings of $ 100,000. Total implementation cost was $110,900 yielding an ROI of 2.2:1 with a 5.4 month payback. | 
