IBT Installs Customized Bar Code Printer

As a VAR, you are well aware of special needs and requirements distinctive to each project you work on. Whether speed requirements, size limitations, or the most common cost limitations, all require you to be able to adapt and sometimes create new solutions to solve your customers’ problems. Integrated Barcode Technology (IBT) recently performed a bar code printer installation for a large fulfillment house, which required the integrator to find a unique answer to its client’s problem.

When little Ricky from Omaha orders online merchandise, the fulfillment house pulls the various items from its warehouse and ships them. The company was experiencing efficiency issues with its internal packaging and shipping line and sought to find a cost-effective solution. IBT heard about the company’s problems from an existing customer, made contact, and researched the problem.

Here’s what IBT found: Packaging employees at the fulfillment house were stationed along a conveyor belt where open boxes would travel. Each box contained outbound products with a paper invoice sitting on top of them. A packager would take an invoice and fold it, place it into a window envelope, tape the box closed, and adhere the envelope onto the box. Unfortunately, the envelopes were prone to being pulled off as the boxes traveled through various shipping stages, including post office processing. In all instances, boxes with missing envelopes had to be reopened and reprocessed, leading to additional labor time and postage costs and a decrease in customer satisfaction.

Remove The Need For PCs With Stand-Alone Bar Code Printers
IBT’s proposed resolution was unique. The integrator wanted to switch the fulfillment house to a bar code labeling system, but wanted to avoid investing in PCs for each workstation (not to mention that work space was too limited to accommodate PCs). IBT researched different solutions and settled on the combination of a SATO GT408e printer and Metrologic Orbit omnidirectional scanner. The VAR chose the GT408e because of SATO’s SEMBL (SATO embedded BASIC language) capabilities. The printer has an on-board BASIC programming interpreter for creating stand-alone programs (i.e. there is no need for a PC).

In addition to the stand-alone capabilities of the printer, IBT chose SATO because of the VAR’s history with the printer company. “We’ve been selling SATO products for 14 years,” says Tom Jackson, VP of sales for IBT. “If there is a problem, 80% of the time it can be fixed over the phone. In many cases, we offer free service contracts, because we know there will be next to nothing to fix.” Jackson also points to the ease of accessibility of SATO’s organization as a benefit to selecting the company’s printers. “When we began working with the SEMBL language, we had difficulty getting the printer to communicate with an external database. The company was incredibly responsive and, at one point, the president of SATO even got involved to get answers for us that had to come from overseas.”

To help secure the contract with the fulfillment house, IBT created the initial program — a $15,000 value — at no cost (future enhancements are paid for by the fulfillment house). In addition, IBT does not charge any licensing fees, a value Jackson explains helped to considerably shorten the payback timeframe. “We try to give away as much as we can based on each specific project,” says Jackson. “We look for long-term relationships and, with that, you need to treat your customers right. Our competition was asking for licensing fees that made the project cost-prohibitive to the client.”

Today, there are 60 of the GT408e printers with bar code scanners throughout the fulfillment center. The total cost of the hardware for the solution was $150,000. “At each station, the packager uses a Metrologic Orbit connected to a GT408e printer to scan a bar code on each invoice lying inside each box,” explains Jackson. “The printer passes a data request to the company’s existing SQL server. The SQL server gathers shipping information from the database and sends it back to the printer. The onboard SEMBL program formats and prints a label with the corresponding shipping information. The total cycle time, from initial scan to finished label, is under 5 seconds.”

By replacing envelopes with labels, the fulfillment house has increased throughput and customer satisfaction, while making the workers happier since they don’t have to deal with the frustration of loose envelopes. “By utilizing this solution, the customer not only realized improved processing time and postage savings, but reduced hardware and software costs as well, since there were no user and site licenses, and PCs didn’t have to be purchased,” concludes Jackson. “The entire project had a four-month payback.”