Fulfillment gets fine-tuned

Printer and collator of promotional kits for retailers increases packaging quality and volume, cuts costs, and gains the ability to make 12 or more changeovers a day.

FILM SAVINGS. Rotary side seal on the stretch wrapper lets BP&I use rolls of film that are 2 ' narrower than what's required for
FILM SAVINGS. Rotary side seal on the stretch wrapper lets BP&I use rolls of film that are 2\" narrower than what's required for

Blanks Printing and Imaging Co. gives real meaning to the term “quick changeover.” That’s because there’s variety galore in the in-store promotional materials it prints, collates, and ships to retailers around the country. One job may involve millions of pieces while the next involves hundreds. And in the morning the item being collated and shipped might be poster sized while by mid-day it’s the size of a business card.

Employing more than 100 people, BP&I does prepress work, photography, proofing/color management, printing, binding, and fulfillment/shipping. The company serves a broad range of regional, national, and international customers, including high-end promotional agencies.

“One of our keys to growth is that we always assume a customer’s needs are changing,” says fulfillment manager Diane Allison. “We constantly ask about their plans, what they think they’ll need, how their operations are evolving, and then we strive to establish the processes that will advance our customers’ plans.”

Allison credits three new pieces of equipment from Lantech (www.lantech.com), backed up by strong support from Lantech distributor xpedx (www.xpedx.xom), for helping BP&I succeed in keeping up with growth that has practically doubled every year since 2002.

The process that Allison manages, known as “fulfillment,” consists essentially of collating, packaging, and shipping promotional materials that might be used in an in-store promotion campaign at Sears, Penney’s, Wal-Mart, Target, or any number of large retailers around the country. From modest beginnings, fulfillment now occupies about 19ꯠ sq’ in the firm’s Dallas, TX, plant. Much of the department’s work consists of drop-shipping market-specific point-of-purchase material and store signage to support weekly ad supplements mailed to consumers, so turnaround time is nearly “real time.”

“We may receive materials in the morning and ship 1ꯠ collated kits to individual locations that afternoon, combining materials we have produced with those of other suppliers or product samples,” says Allison.

A typical project consists of 1ꯠ to 5ꯠ packages, but the department is equipped to shrink wrap runs from 300 to thousands of packages as needed. The smallest items shrink-wrapped are business-card size; the largest can be 16” W by more than 30” L.

“The key to our strategy is rapid response, so changeover time is critical,” Allison says. “We have to be able to tear down in the middle of one job, switch over to another, then jump back on the original work and finish it. We often collate directly onto the lugged infeed conveyors of the shrink wrappers, which are about 20 ft. long, then do more kitting on the exit side before the conveyors terminate at the case erector. The kitted components are placed in the case, then sealed and labeled by downstream machines.”

The fulfillment department got started in shrink wrapping with a manual L-bar machine borrowed from the company’s bindery department, then moved up by purchasing an automatic L-bar machine. That machine’s 33 packs/min. output proved insufficient for the growing volume, and the quality expectations of one customer were hard to meet using it.

Quality is a must

For most printers, shrink wrapping is needed only for shipping/storage protection, or simple convenience packaging for the customer, Allison explains. Her department, however, also must do retail display-quality packaging, where packaging quality can influence customer perceptions about product quality. “We ship retail packs of as few as 25 sheets of paper that are later unpacked by the customer, inventoried at his end, then pulled and shipped to a retail outlet,” she says. “On these packs, the corners can’t curl or puncture after wrapping. There can be no dog ears of any kind, and the clarity and even the tactile feel of the film are critical. More to the point, this customer inspects every package we ship because any returns from a retailer are costly. Our new equipment facilitates meeting his requirement of 100 percent perfection on received goods. In the long run, it’s cheaper for all of us to adhere to this standard going out our door.”

To meet this requirement and handle additional volume, Allison developed a set of requirements and started research on a second shrink-wrap machine. She attended trade shows and talked to other users and vendors. “I’m not a machinery person, and I had no preferences,” she says. “I just knew my requirements and took them to vendors, working through the selection over six to nine months. We methodically worked through a sound ROI and considered how long a machine would be viable for us if the customer mix and needs changed. We wanted a machine adaptable to small or long items, easy to changeover and maintain, and with output significantly better than the 33 per minute we have with our existing machine. We have non-English speaking people working with us, so we also focused on a machine that would be intuitive to set up.”

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