Color Thermal Printers Make Visual Product Identification Easier

While bar coding is an efficient way to keep track of products, sometimes it isn't enough. An employee can't look at a bar code on the outside of a box and immediately know all the information related to its contents without using equipment like a bar-code scanner.

Datacom Systems, Inc., a 7 year-old, Columbia, SC technology solutions provider with 13 employees and sales at $5 million, combined color coding and bar coding during a recent installation. Sonoco Products' Hartsville, SC plant needed a more efficient, cost-effective way to color code packaging boxes so employees could easily tell the contents in each box. The new system allows more time to be spent on quality control and machine maintenance. It also eliminates the need for a storage room.

Sonoco is one of the world's largest manufacturers of packaging materials for industrial and consumer markets, including the textile industry The company's sales totaled $2.8 billion in 1997 and has 17,000 employees at more than 270 locations around the world. In the textile industry, fibers like cotton or wool are wound on paper cones. Specific colors and patterns are assigned by a textile customer to denote the specific fiber which will be wound on a cone. Color coding on the outside of the box allows Sonoco employees to see what pattern of cones were in the box without reading the label. The new system uses a TEC America CB-416 thermal transfer, color printer and custom-designed software to add these color codings to the existing label stock.

Production Time Was Re-Directed
According to Datacom's President, Si Amick, Sonoco's packing station operators were spending a significant amount of time with the old system pulling specific color combinations and patterns for their specific products. The old system was a two-step process. First, specific job information was scanned by the packing operator, where it went to the plant's UNIX server. The server transferred the information for the shipping labels to a black-and-white, thermal transfer printer. Secondly, each packaging station operator checked a list to see what items were going to be packed that day. Specific color combinations were assigned to specific products, so the operators had to pull 4x12-inch paper panels with those colors and patterns. These panels were placed in the plastic sleeve on the outside of the boxes along with the shipping label. There was a lot of room for human error, says Amick, since there were two components to the labeling process.

Producing A Colorful Solution
Amick was recommended to Louis Kirven, IT systems coordinator at Sonoco, by a mutual friend. "He called me and asked if we could print a color label using thermal transfer technology," says Amick. "He wanted to make sure that a new printer could communicate with the existing equipment in the packaging area. Datacom works closely with Batchnet Corp. (a software developer in Cary, NC) so we asked them to develop the interface software."

The most challenging aspect of the installation was integrating the custom software. "The old labeling process was arduous," says Herbert Tull, general manager of Batchnet Corp. "The new system works just like the old system, but we added a PC at each of the six stations to accommodate the thermal transfer, color printer. Now, the same information is scanned and sent to the UNIX server, but before it's printed, it goes to the PC which assigns the color combination before printing the label."

"The printer is creating a label in seven to nine seconds," says Tull. "The PC is required to provide a lot of horsepower to print this fast." Batchnet is constantly improving the software as well. The first run at printing took between 25 and 30 seconds. "But we were still way ahead of second place at that point," he says. The software was streamlined to make printing faster.

More Time Is Spent On Quality Assurance
The new labels are the same size as the original 4x12-inch, one-color labels. Two inches on each side accommodate the additional color coding on both edges. Light pens are used to scan the initial bar-coded work orders, eliminating the need to key-in information. Once the work order is scanned, the system looks up the work order, determines how many labels need to be made and appends the color code to the label. In a matter of two or three minutes, the exact number of labels needed are printed at the workstation.

The system was completed in four months, according to Amick. He and Brian Jobmann, Southeastern sales manager with TEC America, spent a day at the Sonoco plant training its operators how to use the color printer. Jobmann also taught Sonoco's maintenance division how to perform some minimal repairs to the printer.

"This unique application was ideal for a color printer," says Amick. "Sonoco had hundreds of combinations to deal with as far as color and format. The combination of printers and PCs at every station, eliminated the need for Sonoco to keep an inventory of the colored paper. That process took space, money through investment and production time. Now, all of the colors and patterns reside in the database, where they can be printed on demand."

Sonoco Expects To See A Return On Investment In A Year
"Color printers cost more than regular thermal transfer printers," says Amick. "However, in our application, the investment was worth the price. A lot of customers have called us after seeing these labels to find out more about this process.

"With a printer of this type, a company can buy one stock and generate the labels as orders come in. Any customer that has a wide variety of labels, particularly with color involved, is a great candidate for this product."