Case Studies
Project Profile for the Label Printing System
Executive Summary
Company
The company was founded in 1999 and is located in Bensenville, IL. With over 200,000 square feet of manufacturing and food grade clean rooms, it is uniquely able to provide world class packaging design, manufacturing, and co-packing services.
Solution Description
The VB.Net application is used for generating labels in an efficient and timely manner for daily shipments.
Benefits
The system will serve the company’s future needs and contribute to its growth and expansion by allowing for installation of modern printers to speed up processing.
Software and Services
- VB.Net
- SQL Server 2008
- Microsoft Windows XP
- Microsoft Windows Vista
- Microsoft Windows 7
Customer Profile
Sector: Consumer Goods
Industry: Packaging and Container Manufacturing
The company offers its expertise to client operations professionals in manufacturing, co-packing, quality assurance protocols and safety standards, while additionally providing extensive knowledge of retailers and consumers for client brand-marketing teams.
Business Situation
The company was using multiple Access databases to manage and create shipping and packaging labels. It needed to replace its outdated dot matrix printers by purchasing new state of the art printers. The Access databases were critical to their operations but hard to manage since each employee required his or her own copy of the master database. Additionally the master Access database was not dynamically linked to the ERP inventory database.
Solution
Label Printing System
alligatortek developed a system specifically designed with a GUI front end very similar to the Access databases previously used by employees. The new system was readily accepted by the company’s employees since the two systems were very similar. Employees were able to use the new system immediately with minimal re-training.
The company required that alligatortek integrate the database with its ERP inventory database in order to eliminate duplicative data entry. In order to meet this requirement, alligatortek implemented a robust SQL Server 2008 database linked to the production ERP. The system provides the power and scalability of SQL Server working in conjunction with a flexible and user friendly VB.Net front end implementation.
The system was designed with a shared user environment that allows each user to manage their own work while sharing a central repository of online, real-time inventory items. The software was successfully deployed on Windows 7 subsequent to initial delivery.