About Paroc
The PAROC group is a multinational manufacturer of mineral stone wool insulation. Company’s headquarters is located in Finland and production plants are present in 5 countries – Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Russia and Poland. Polish plant is located in Trzemieszno. In 2016 next stage of the plant’s development process has been completed, allowing an increase on operational capacity and production volume.
Objectives of the implementation process
Along with the purchase of new equipment (Unilogo labelling machines) a need for more effective labelling process management occurred. After carefully conducted analysis, following list of required functionalities emerged:
- Possibility to independently create label formats in a modeler installed on the computers assigned to people responsible for these formats.
- Keeping database of products.
- Assigning label format prepared in the modeler to corresponding products.
- Keeping record of changes done to label formats.
- Management of labelling points – possibility to connect and name any new labelling point that complies with Zebra printers.
- Changeover of each labelling point via www app, with the detection of missing or old label formats in given labelling point.
- Active management of labels with unique numberings according to model of periodic control of printer’s buffer and dynamic charging of the printer’s buffer with labels with unique numbers printed in given amount
- Preview of the label application.
- Logs review.
- Possibility to print label copy from products history.
Overview of the solution applied
Set goals were met through use of SmartMES Labelling&Trace system. System running on the application server is available to users via web browser. Modeler of label formats is installed on the computer of person responsible for the design of label templates. To edit the labels BarTender system by Seagull Scientific was used, as it was already in use by PAROC. This way obtained high elasticity and scalability of this solution allows for operating on over 8500 different label templates as well as correct management of both manual and automatic printing (executed by dozens of labelling points).
Achieved benefits
- Possibility of modeling logistic labels along with corresponding variables and rules of data generation based on data sources.
- Ensuring continuity and uniqueness of SSCC numbers through mechanism of detecting incompatibility alerts.
- Standardization of labelling machines management (common interface available for machine operators, regardless of the machine used).
- High availability and continuity of system’s work thanks to online/offline mechanism (work on server or work stations with data caching).
