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Success Story
Label Technology Benefits from MITS Discover for Production and Sales
Implementation of MITS Sales Analysis and MITS Production Analysis Hypercubes Helps Labeling Company Deliver Products and Services with Greater Efficiency and Accuracy
Company Background
Label Technology is a designer, printer, and manufacturer of pressure-sensitive labels and flexible packaging for the North American marketplace. Established in 1986 and located in the Central Valley of California, the company primarily serves the food and beverage industries, with familiar brands including Odwalla and Foster Farms. Its leading customers also come from the cosmetic and medical industries.
The 100-person company supplies label application machines, thermal transfer and direct thermal printers, bar-code verification equipment, RFID, Smart Labeling, label design software, and thermal ribbons. The services they provide include sequential bar coding, numbering, and maintenance contracts for equipment.
The Challenge
Label Technology’s success lies in its ability to deliver products and services to its 400-plus customers with accuracy and timeliness. As a "job shop" Label Technology must have access to a comprehensive view, in real-time, of the precise product mix and production levels in its plant. This keeps the company up-to-date on its profitability, productivity, and plant capacity. However, acquiring this information has been difficult.
"The problem was that the managers and owner of the company wanted different views of the data," Vinton Thengvall, CFO of Label Technology, states, "and it was hard to get that information in a timely fashion." Whenever any staff members at Label Technology needed production and sales data in a new format, they had to contract customizations from Primac Systems, their ERP system provider. As one reporting option, Label Technology loaded some of its data into Microsoft Office Excel, but found it difficult to use spreadsheets as the primary form for manipulating their data.
The Solution
In a move to solve these challenges, Label Technology considered Cognos initially but identified two factors that made Cognos’ solution unfeasible: the implementation was very complicated; and the pricing was prohibitive. "We had been looking at options in terms of data cubes," Thengvall says, "and being able to access our data in an interactive way as well as in a format that would allow us to view data from multiple perspectives." With MITS Discover, they found "a much simpler interface and a better price point."
To get set up, Label Technology sent MITS’ Professional Services staff its specifications for the two Hypercubes. "I was impressed by how easily the MITS staff was able to pull the data out of Primac," Thengvall says. "Some of the reporting that we wanted from the Production Analysis Hypercube was very specialized. The MITS Professional Services staff was able to take the Primac program and put it into the MITS Discover logic so it would pull the data we wanted. Anything we had in Primac, even the logic, we could put into MITS Discover."
Label Technology installed two MITS Discover Hypercubes: Production Analysis and Sales Analysis. Thengvall, who has a finance background in a number of industries, considers the Sales Analysis Hypercube something any industry could benefit from having while the Production Analysis Hypercube is especially suited for a job shop like Label Technology.
The Results
"MITS Discover has helped me understand the business better," John Bankson, president of Label Technology, exclaimed after the MITS Discover Sales Analysis Hypercube and Production Analysis Hypercube were installed. With MITS Discover Hypercubes in place Label Technology management can access data from multiple views, including by sales representative, customer service representative, product line, type of print job, and more. In addition, they can see how much each sales representative’s is doing in sales by quarter, year, and month. Thengvall explains, "We’ve had the data in the past but it’s been much more difficult to get at. Each view would basically be a new report format. With MITS Discover, it’s easy to access the information, change the view on the fly, and see the results."
Future Plans
Label Technology is considering a new Production Analysis Hypercube; the one the company uses now suits production-planning purposes, showing the data in dollars. The new one would track units of material usage (in hours and by footage). Thengvall describes how the additional Production Hypercube would further satisfy Label Technology’s needs: "Our biggest challenge is getting a handle on capacity, and right now we produce static reports." He continues, "However, if we were to try to produce all the reports we needed to see the whole picture, it would be pretty daunting. Having the new MITS Discover Hypercube would allow us to approach that data differently and get a better handle on it."
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name
Label Technology Inc.
www.labeltech.com
Description
Designer, printer, and manufacturer of pressure-sensitive labels and flexible packaging for the North American marketplace
Vertical Software Provider
Primac Systems
Database
IBM UniVerse
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