Our life sciences client had recently upgraded their SAP ERP solution to align their two manufacturing sites located in the same country.
Rapidly expanding, they soon acquired new sites across different countries, and quickly rolled out their existing ERP to them. However, their labelling solution was becoming obsolete and was incompatible with the new sites. The interim fix was to heavily customise the template solution with add-on technical developments to make it work.
Our client knew they needed to develop a new, global labelling strategy with a standardised solution to easily integrate with their SAP ERP rollout across all sites and locations; one that met global regulatory requirements, customer needs and improved the efficiency of their supply chain.
Our solution architect and logistics experts worked together with client’s ERP team to evaluate their template and look at options for a new labelling solution. With their existing set-up, our team noticed that they needed complex technical expertise to build label formats and that the lack of scalability was hampering the roll out to new sites.
We tasked ourselves with exploring various third party labelling solutions that could seamlessly integrate with SAP. One that required minimal technical developments, with a user friendly interface to easily design new label templates, that could be scaled and adapted to the growing needs of the client’s supply chain network. Based on our client’s needs and our previous experience within this sector, we proposed that Loftware’s NiceLabel was the best fit.
We provided a detailed solution design, technical specifications and an implementation road-map, liaising with Loftware to outline and draw-up the contract agreement to be signed between them and our client.
We deployed the NiceLabel solution on a cloud server and integrated it with SAP. We walked through our client’s global supply chain processes and aligned the label printing with their supply chain business process flow, designing a list of relevant label formats. These formats included inbound GR labels, different sample labels, production dispensing labels, engineering labels, finished products labels and warehouse storage labels. They were carefully designed to show and print any hazard information pictograms, wherever needed.
We developed a technical solution in SAP that automatically triggers label printing in the background for relevant business transactions and interfaces the dataset with NiceLabel for seamless printing.
To enhance flexibility, we also designed and developed a one stop, user friendly cockpit in SAP to enable various labels to be printed manually, with the flexibility to choose, for example, a precise number or to draw up labels for a specific set of containers. Both the manual and automated settings within SAP seamlessly integrate with the NiceLabel solution to produce perfect labels.
We delivered a robust and stable, scalable solution for our client that we piloted at one of their sites. Due to its success, it has given the client the ability to roll it out themselves across their other sites and allows them the adaptability to incorporate each site’s individual, additional requirements with ease. Volumes can flux easily with demand and the new formats provider greater handling accuracy, traceability on site, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
Our years of experience in supply chain and logistics within the life sciences industry helps us to quickly understand the details and nuances of projects like this. We are able to get to the due diligence phase quickly and efficiently, source the appropriate partner software, and partner with them to design and deliver the best solution.
