As the digitisation of manufacturing advances apace, forward thinking suppliers are developing solutions to help manufacturers optimise the digital supply chain. PKN asked APPMA member Markem-Imaje's national sales manager Matt Deeran about the company’s new portfolio of smart products.
PKN: What is your new range of “packaging intelligence” products designed to do?
Matt Deeran: Markem-Imaje’s newly released version 6 of CoLOS Information Management System is a suite of software solutions designed with our customers’ challenges in mind. It focuses on minimising waste, driving efficiency, achieving compliance, and protecting and promoting the brand.
PKN: How does the Markem-Imaje solution help prevent waste?
Matt Deeran: With our Coding Integrity module, CoLOS can identify product coding errors in real time instead of at the end of the production run. CoLOS confirms that every print is present, readable, and contains the right data, using a fully integrated camera.
CoLOS takes this to the next level with our Packaging Integrity module, ensuring the right pre-printed packaging material is selected and matches the production order. This obviously eliminates recalls where, for example, pre-printed ingredients are inconsistent with the product being packed. This is critical when dealing with allergens.
Together, our Coding and Packaging Integrity modules ensure right data, right print, right packaging, every time.
PKN: What are some of the challenges your customers face when trying to improve their efficiency?
Matt Deeran: We continually find common challenges across different customers and different industries. With shorter production runs across multiple products becoming the norm, change over time is where a lot of efficiency is lost.
Traditionally, operators must set up each printer manually, losing time and possibly introducing errors of incorrect message selection or incorrect data.
The CoLOS Line & Data Management module allows operators to download complete production line jobs in one step from an easy-to-use operator interface. Alternatively, when fully integrated with an ERP system, it automatically populates messages with SKU data by linking fields on message designs to those in the ERP master data base, and then seamlessly sends these down to all the printers on the line.
Lack of visibility into printers can also cause production downtime from unexpected printer stoppages and failures. The CoLOS dashboard monitors printer performance and consumables levels from any PC and mobile devices with immediate alerts for printer problems via SMS and email.
PKN: How important is it for your customers to be compliant?
Matt Deeran: It’s critical for our customers to be compliant. They are faced with multiple levels of compliance obligations, required by retailers, legal requirements, industry specific standards and product traceability for product recall.
Quite often underestimated is supply-chain compliance. The Pallet Tracking module is specifically designed to meet these requirements. It automates pallet labelling and establishes unique, fully GS1 compliant pallet identities. From a single line or multiple lines, Pallet Tracking tracks, generates SSCC and correctly positions the labels to comply with major retailer logistic requirements. Pallet Tracking also offers real-time importing and exporting of individual pallet data and traceability information back to an ERP.
