Gemba Lot / Box Label Printing?

[DanteCaspian]

Wondering if someone can help us out with something here.

Low Volume High Mix factory
Our Current State:

-All of our custom lot labels for our production on the shop floor are batch produced for upcoming orders; this equates to upto 500,000 labels on the shop floor at one time waiting to be consumed or WIP.
- 70% of our labels are 2x4", others are as small as 1x1/2" or as large as 4x8".
- We currently employ someone to manage and manufacture the labels in this manner on one shift with some very difficult to use hardware and software, compounded by a sloppy database built over the years.
-Our labor costs are about $12,000 a year for this function!
-Due to the restrictions of the current thermal printing machine, printing materials are also costly, with a need of batched inventory (though we have controlled inventory better now).


Dream Future State:

- Custom Labels printed at each workstation JIT, as needed.
- elimination of batch production pre-production
- elimination of labor overhead
- Simple machinery and software for the shop floor operators.
- Bar codes are not planed to be used, but we will need the capability on 10% of our common products.
- I may be able to convince some of our customers to use smaller labels at a max 2x8".


So, if anyone knows, what solutions are our there that are proven?



Thanks

 

[wmarhel]

My first question would be that since you are a low-volume-high-mix operations; why the need to have 500,000 labels on the production floor. That seems excessive, but without understanding your particular circumstances it could be nothing.

What kind of operation is this and what is the product that you are labeling?

Wayne

 

[DanteCaspian]

It is excessive. Horribly excessive.
The work orders are prepared 24 hrs in advance among 28+ work stations. The reason is the orders are prepared and labels are only capable being printed by on person on day shift, we run 3 shifts.
The level of skill for the hardware, messy data base and software do not make it feasible to put the current single label machine on the shop floor.

 

[Kales Veggie]

I worked at a rubber extrusion / molding facility (24/7, big 3 and transplants). We printed labels at the work station using RF terminals/printers connected to the MRP server. It worked great.

Printing a label also created a transaction for production reporting.

Prior to this system, labels were printed in advance. (lost labels, wrong labels on parts, labels with wrong revision level on parts were some of the issues).

 

[DanteCaspian]

That sounds like the solution we are looking for.
Link to our MRP, if possible, would potentially eliminate another document and many processes around that.

Do you recall what the printer brand was?

 

[AggieRob02]

I have used thermal printers, and they work great. However, they are costly to run. But the idea of tying into ERP would save some NVA time from the messy database. I would Google new manufacturers of Tape Dispensing Machines, as I have seen newer technology out there.

 

[DanteCaspian]

Thanks everyone.
I am still having a hard time finding proper information on this kaizen for us. Searches seem to yield very little.
Hopefully someone here can share what they use in their production system with success. It seems that the industries in our area I have contacted, either have an automated system (ie. bar-code systems etc.), or do batching of labels.
The few printer manufactures I have contacted are not familiar with what I am doing, or the complexity of networking is nuts. I have one other source who is to come in to our facility for solution plans.

Again, basically we need to print standard ID/Ship labels for each box/lot at each work station for various products at any run. After speaking with our QAM and IT people, networking is not that critical, as our real time system monitor parts out of the machines.
In theory, each box being filed with finished goods would have the Operators physically press a button to generate the next box label to place in the defined area, as per customer requirements or standard company practice.
80% of our labels are 2x4". Other sizes are 1x1" to 8x9", but we will likely limit those operations to another cell with a different single printer for JIT use.
Any further help would be awesome!


Thanks again,

Robert

 

[DanteCaspian]

Normally, I don't "bump", but here I am!
Bump.
Any specific solutions?

We found a scale supplier that has printable labels from the scale itself, and will connect to other thermal printers. The data is pulled from a database that we would have to set up, as it won't pull from the existing database.
This would deal with some our part variation issues, do to human error, while presenting the labels. As the software is not compatible to our ERP though, there is greater data entry that would need to be done, we are still trying to determine if such a system is needed though. The key is getting labels printed at each work station, as needed, preferably pulled from our current data and ERP.
Our IT guy has put out a message to our ERP (IQMS) creator and the user groups, but is sounds like no one is doing what we are trying to conceive.