Manufacturer cuts into downtime, provides more reliability

As a leading global manufacturer of advanced plasma, laser and water jet cutting systems, Hypertherm employs 1,300 workers to serve customers like Ford, Volvo, Harley Davidson and Caterpillar. To address a range of issues with its complex homegrown labeling system, the company deployed a browser-based alternative that saved the company millions.

The company’s existing homegrown system was customized with layers of third-party applications and many software licenses were no longer available. The system particularly limited the facility’s 42 label printing stations, and downtime required five to 10 hours of troubleshooting and repair each week. All of this resulted in customer dissatisfaction, brand integrity issues, and lost revenues of between $25,000 and $100,000 worth of productivity each week.

“If labeling goes down, our production process stops because it’s part of our quality system to make sure that the products are completely together before they go out the door,” says Robert Kay, information services operations support for Hypertherm. “If labeling goes down, we’re dead in the water.”

The new browser-based enterprise labeling solution (Loftware, loftware.com) uses the same application internally and for external customers to avoid multiple replicated databases. The company has reduced downtime, avoided mislabeling, simplified maintenance, sped production and provided reliable labeling for its global suppliers. Kay says the system has already saved $1.5 million.

“We have a single labeling system to meet all of our needs, throughout all of our locations, across all of our suppliers worldwide,” Kay says. “Labeling is the cap on the end of the manufacturing process that ties everything together.”