problemsolved
Eliminating bad bar-code labels
The Problem: For World Kitchen, a
manufacturer of cookware and kitchen
tools, faulty bar codes were fast becoming a
big headache—mainly because they were
costing the company a lot of money. The
problem was chargebacks from customers
when shipments arrived with unreadable
labels. Some of World Kitchen’s clients have
highly automated receiving operations that
rely on bar codes to function smoothly.
Because any failure to read a bar code
required costly manual processing, these
customers often hit World Kitchen with
compliance penalties if a label failed to meet
their requirements.
As for the source of the problem, it was
typically one of two things. Sometimes, it
was the label itself. The labels produced by
the printers World Kitchen was using at the
time were easily damaged during warehouse
handling. Terry Moore, senior network
administrator for World Kitchen, says the
trip through the material handling system
at the company’s DCs often caused smearing or tearing of the labels. “The quality was
not always the best,” he says.
Other times, the problem arose from a
misprinted bar code. Although World
Kitchen’s printers were performing relatively well, there was inevitably the occasional
error. And with a high-volume operation,
even a failure rate of 0.1 percent adds up
quickly. “As a result, we were getting substantial chargebacks,” Moore says. All told,
the company was paying thousands of dollars a month in compliance penalties.
The Solution: A few years back,
World Kitchen went shopping for a printing
system that would produce more durable
labels and address the readability problem.
After reviewing its alternatives, the company selected Printronix’s T5000r high-speed
thermal printers with integrated verification technology known as the Online Data
Validation (ODV) option.
Not only do the printers produce higher-
quality labels than their predecessors did,
but the integrated verification technology
has eliminated problems with misprinted
codes. Essentially, the technology allows
World Kitchen to set the symbology specifi-
cations it wants for bar codes and then ver-
ifies that every bar code meets that stan-
dard. (The American National Standards
Institute has a grading structure for bar-
code print quality, with ratings that range
from A to F. World Kitchen has set its veri-
fiers to reject any bar code below a B.)
THE PLAYERS
CUSTOMER
World Kitchen
Primary business:
Manufacturing and
marketing bakeware,
dinnerware, kitchen
and household tools,
rangetop cookware,
and cutlery, including
well-known brands like
Corning Ware, Corelle,
and Baker’s Secret
Headquarters:
Rosemont, Ill.
SUPPLIER
Printronix
( www.printronix.com)
SOLUTION
Printronix T5000r
thermal printers with
the Online Data
Validation (ODV)
option
