DC Velocity - September 2013

ner to the printer. Now, orders are pulled into the printer via Wi-Fi from the firm’s order system. The clerk responsible for picking and shipping the order scans and weighs each item, prompting the printer to check the actual weight against the expected weight to ensure a match. It signals the clerk in the event of a mismatch. Using the program eliminated inaccurate shipments for the customer.

Consider the budget and the required throughput. Automated systems are substantially more costly than manual systems but have a much higher throughput. If the goal is to limit touches or to label items at high speed, that argues for automation. But it’s important to note that opting for a print-and-apply system also has implications for the design of the overall material handling system, Boroff warns. “My customer has to expect to have enough accumulation to support a print-and-apply system,” he says. “You can’t just have four or five or 20 feet of accumulation for products because you’re going to starve your system or overload it.”

Does portability have value? In the past, manual systems—with the printer in a closet or office for access to power and connections to the facility’s IT network—often required printing large numbers of labels at once, then bringing them to the floor to match up with shipments. No more. Portable, battery-operated systems with Wi-Fi connectivity allow for a great deal more flexibility, says Perry.

“Rather than have the printer at a fixed point in the warehouse, you can take the printer anywhere you want. If you have a battery cart, you don’t need a power cord. It is driving productivity in the shipping room.” And, he adds, some portable printers have their own batteries built in, eliminating the need for the cart.

What are you labeling? Cartons? Totes?

Polybags? Do products vary markedly in
size? Do you have a full-case picking oper-
ation or are you picking mixed cases? Those
are all factors in the print-and-apply tech-
nology decision. Full-case operations lend
themselves to automation. In mixed-case
picking, where multiple products are
or troubleshoot problems, it gets
tough to design a print-and-apply
system for that customer,” he says.

“There will be times when you have to interface with the system, reset the orders, or manually rectify issues that come up. I want to make sure they are able to support it.” If the DC’s operations or maintenance staff doesn’t have the skills to maintain an automated system, then a manual system may make more sense.

Get smart. While the skill of the
workforce is important, printing
system providers are building more
intelligence into the printers them-
selves. Karl Perry, senior product
manager for printer software at
Intermec, says that although print-
ers have been able to host applica-
tions for some time, manufacturers
are now making the process simpler.
For example, in August, Intermec
launched a major upgrade in its
printer software from the reli-
able but dated GW-
BASIC to the more
modern and robust C#
(pronounced C sharp)
language. The result,
says Perry, has been
to make application
development easier
for the average developer
skilled in C#.

To illustrate the utility of built-in applications, Perry cites the case of a Midwestern high-tech distributor. The shipping department was having problems with shipments that were misdirected or contained incorrect items. Systems integrator ToolWorx Information Products wrote an application for Intermec printers and linked a scale and scan-