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Zebra
Printing Using InterForm 400 |
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Parts labelling in the automotive
sector is a complex, yet essential, part of the
Industry's manufacturing and logistics, as NSK's
AS/400 Operations Manager found out.
NSK Steering Systems Europe Limited is the manufacturer
of steering systems for companies such as Nissan,
Honda, General Motors, Ford, Toyota and BMW. Each
individual client may have its own specifications
regarding the documentation of the parts they are
supplied with, or use European automotive standards.
The challenge facing NSK Steering Systems was to
be able to provide each of their clients with a
different format of documentation, if required.
This included the packing lists, despatch notes
and the labels, which are applied to the finished
product containers.
The company that enabled them to solve these issues
is SpaceTec who are the UK supplier of InterForm400
an electronic forms and intelligent output management
solution for the IBM System i.
NSK Steering Systems had originally consulted SpaceTec
a number of years ago when changes made to the company
operation in Europe, resulted in the inability of
their incumbent electronic forms software to deploy
across their WAN and remote VPN users. NSK steering
Systems runs its manufacturing systems on an IBM System i
and therefore this was their preferred choice of
platform for their electronic forms package.
The initial installation of InterForm400 was to
solve a specific problem, however it was soon realised
that this package offered NSK Steering Systems many
additional advantages and features. One such element
was the ability to add extra data to any outgoing
document, which averted changes to the core software
package, Mapics (Now Infor XA).
NSK Steering Systems has made great use of the product.
When the company initiated a name change, it was
only a small task to re-design all the documents
in house without the need to involve any third party
suppliers.
Kevin Wainwright, NSK Steering Systems IBM System i operations
manager said
“We had a very tight deadline to meet
when the company changed name in 2001 and InterForm400
allowed us to meet this. Templates for all documents
were created by out technical department, with minimal
time and cost.”
NSK Steering Systems were then able to provide individual
layouts for all of their documents matching the
client requirements exactly. Just one example of
this is Honda who had requested to receive a packing
list rather than a dispatch note with their orders.
Under the old system the warehouse employees would
need to be aware of this and react accordingly to
every Honda order. Using InterForm400’s API,
NSK Steering Systems were able to design the process
so that it is totally transparent to the warehouse
staff, who call the same option regardless of which
client it is for.
Patrick Race MD of SpaceTec said
“A major requirement for NSK Steering
Systems was to be able to simplify tasks in house
and ensure all their procedures were the same whilst
also meeting the client’s requirements.”
The next challenge arose for NSK Steering Systems
when some of the clients wanted to move away from
the ODETTE (European Automotive labeling standards)
to bespoke labeling that they could integrate into
their varied manufacturing resource planning (MRP)
and logistics and supply chain management systems.
NSK Steering Systems use Zebra printers within the
manufacturing. The labels produced by Infor XA were
only to the ODETTE standards. After further consultation
with SpaceTec NSK installed the ZPL (zebra label
printing) module of InterForm400. This allowed NSK
Steering Systems to design the labels in the same
way as they design their electronic forms and produce
any type of label the client required.
“If a client requests a label change we
can respond quickly, which can be in minutes for
minor changes. A major change to a label format
will still only take around half a day. The alternative
solution was to employ an external consultant to
write the ZPL code, in an RPG program, every time
a change was made” said Wainwright.
More recently changes were made to the internal
structure of NSK which meant that the finished manufactured
items, which were previously the property of NSK
Steering Systems, would now become the property
of the parent company NSK Europe. Everything now
had to show the parent company logo and branch office
bank details. These changes need to be in place
by 1st Jan 2005, Again it was a task that was easy
to achieve with InterForm400.
The comment made by Wainwright was:
“Without InterForm400 we would have struggled
to be operational by 1st Jan. We have been able
to become self sufficient with no need to rely on
third party suppliers to implement these changes.
We now print invoices directly to the printers in
the parent company offices, over our WAN links in
the UK, Italy, France, Germany and Spain all from
our IBM System i in the UK.”
NSK Steering Systems has seen a number of major
changes to their organisation over the past years
however by using InterForm400 document & label
changes have been seamless to the users with no
need for retraining.
The conclusion drawn by Wainwright was:
“Interform400 has proved indispensable
for us. It started as a replacement solution for
an incumbent which couldn’t handle the change
to our technology and has grown from there. The
benefits that we have seen far out way any investment
made and have ensured that Interform400 is an integrated
part of our operational structure.”
“NSK Steering Systems is the perfect example
of how a company can utilise the InterForm400 modules
to its best advantage. As each new business issue
arose we were able to show NSK a solution using
software which was already installed. There are
very few software packages that once installed for
a specific reason offer more than a quick fix to
other problems seen at a later stage. Interform400
However is feature rich and flexible ensuring a
more solid and reliable solution.” said
Race
About
NSK steering systems
NSK is a global leading supplier of bearings, automotive
components and steering systems, precision and mechatronic
products. With a turnover of 5 billion euro, the
NSK Group employs more than 23,000 people worldwide.
The NSK Group’s European arm, NSK Europe,
brings together: pan-European sales operations;
Manufacturing bases in the UK, Poland and Germany;
distribution centres in the Netherlands, Germany
and UK; state-of-the-art technology centres; and
a comprehensive network of local Authorised Distributors.
The sales operations consist of three autonomous
business units focused on Bearings, Precision products
and Automotive markets with local sales offices
throughout Europe.
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