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Californian wine label company achieves operational success with Radius® ERP

ePS Packaging - G3 Case Study (2)

About the company

A premium wine and spirits supplier stands out as a leading provider of pressure-sensitive and cold-glue labels in the wine, spirits, and beverage industry with locations across North America. This family-owned company has built a reputation for delivering exceptional quality, reliability, and innovation that its clients trust.

The challenge

In the early 2000s, due to increasing process complexities, the company realized it needed to streamline its production scheduling, optimize inventory management, and gain complete operational business visibility. They sought a solution that could manage the diversified requirements of labeling production, reduce order fulfillment times, and ensure accuracy in inventory and process management.

Key benefits
arrow-trend-down Reduced number of changeovers
timer Significant reduction in overtime
gears Automated +70% of scheduling

The solution

Unparalleled capabilities from a best-in-class ERP

The company chose the Supply Chain Analyst and Master Scheduler to lead the project of implementing eProductivity Software (ePS) PrintFlow®. PrintFlow, the most comprehensive scheduling tool for the packaging industry, optimizes complex schedules quickly and efficiently. It reduces setup times and costs, maximizes equipment utilization, manages capacity, and cuts waste in multi-site environments. The Supply Chain Analyst teamed up with the company’s Business System Analyst, who heads the manufacturing systems administration, and together they worked on a project to drive continuous improvements across various departments.

Today, the team is highly proficient with ePS Radius® Enterprise Resource Planner (ERP), effectively integrating various business processes. Their expertise in utilizing Radius has enabled efficient management of a large volume of orders with precision, transforming their initial aspirations into a strategic operational advantage and solidifying their position as an industry leader.

Commenting on the long-term project, their Business System Analyst explains, "Our goal is to make sure everything moves faster, smoother, and more efficiently." The largest facility can manage up to 1000 open jobs at any time, while its other branches can manage between 200 and 300 jobs.

The company has enjoyed continued growth over the years and is determined to optimize its operations further by implementing various technologies. As an established user of Radius ERP, the company has found that most of its modules, such as the tooling library, estimating, sales order, and purchase orders, are essential for its business. Especially the tooling library, which is heavily utilized due to the volume of orders they receive. The company recognizes that maximizing the use of Radius is crucial for providing accurate data while saving time because of the nature of its business and order volumes.

With the acquisition of two other sites and subsequent growth, the company faced pressure to consider the leading generic ERPs that would unify its processes across the entire enterprise. However, after evaluating different solutions, they found none as capable as Radius. As a result, the company decided to continue using Radius in their labeling division as it remains the most suitable solution for their packaging manufacturing needs.

Their Business System Analyst recalls, "Radius ERP has been our choice for 18 years. In a demanding market like wine and spirit labels, we couldn't be happier with it. Its modules tailored to our industry’s needs have enabled us to streamline our packaging operations and achieve our goals. If there were a better solution, we would have changed by now."

Radius ERP

Radius ERP is a future-proof packaging enterprise resource planning (ERP) which provides core business functions, such as costing, inventory information, order management, estimating, production planning, and scheduling.

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Trusted technology partner for leaders in the packaging industry

The company chose the Radius ERP system due to its comprehensive nature, innovative modules, and ability to optimize automated processes. The print and packaging operations rely heavily on Radius, making it a versatile and essential tool for their business. Due to the sheer volume of output and scheduling required, the company always looks to maximize utilization of cross-enterprise production capacity. To achieve their goals, they have started looking at other optimization and automation-enabling solutions within ePS’ Packaging Suite.

The Business System Analyst continues, "Radius has proven to have all the essential ingredients. It offers comprehensive features across modules and connected ePS systems, addressing a majority of our requirements. With ePS PrintFlow integrated into Radius, we have great visibility to production scheduling across all facilities. The emphasis ePS Packaging places on user interface and experience, automation, and seamless integration of sister solutions makes it exceptionally appealing to us. We anticipate the introduction of ePS Automator and AutoCount to help us get closer to a complete solution. ePS outshines competitors with its wealth of industry knowledge realized in its technologies. We have yet to find an alternative that matches the value we receive. Our commitment to Radius is unwavering, and we foresee no plans to switch anytime soon."

ePS Packaging - G3 Case Study (3)
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“Radius has proven to have all the essential ingredients. It offers comprehensive features across modules and connected ePS systems, addressing a majority of our requirements. With ePS PrintFlow integrated into Radius, we have great visibility to production scheduling across all facilities. The emphasis ePS Packaging places on user interface and experience, automation, and seamless integration of sister solutions makes it exceptionally appealing to us.

We anticipate the introduction of ePS Automator and AutoCount to help us get closer to a complete solution. ePS outshines competitors with its wealth of industry knowledge realized in its technologies. We have yet to find an alternative that matches the value we receive. Our commitment to Radius is unwavering, and we foresee no plans to switch anytime soon.”

Business System Analyst

The result

Planning the future of production with a touch of tech

The company has experienced significant growth due to successful acquisitions. To support its continued success and maintain its exacting standards of quality and efficiency, they began exploring ways to centralize its production scheduling and automate processes. They recognized that these changes would be essential as the volume of work grew exponentially and were concerned that they would outgrow Radius’s native scheduling capabilities.

They set out to improve efficiency and automate scheduling across multiple sites to increase its production capacity. They conducted thorough research to explore options and assess potential upgrades. After comparing several competitors, they determined that PrintFlow was the most suitable choice to enhance their operations.

At ePS’ CONNECT Industry Event and User Conference, the company actively participated in the event and learned about the benefits of PrintFlow through demonstrations, customer panels, and networking opportunities. They were impressed by PrintFlow's advanced automation capabilities and its smooth integration with Radius ERP, helping them decide on PrintFlow as their preferred solution.

 

PrintFlow boosts efficiency and automates scheduling across multiple sites


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"The game changer for us was the automation capability that PrintFlow offered."

PrintFlow helped automate operations by allowing them to view all their plants at once and addressing their scheduling challenges, which also created new possibilities.

The primary objective was to streamline scheduling to minimize the time schedulers invest in manual tasks and allow PrintFlow to handle the heavier workloads. Implementing PrintFlow across 19-20 workstations has yielded tangible results, displaying a noticeable reduction in overtime, changeovers, and manual scheduling effort.

ePS Packaging - G3 Case Study (1)

As a result of the PrintFlow implementation, the team has experienced enhanced communication, fostering improved collaboration as well. The Master Scheduler's unwavering commitment to leveraging PrintFlow's automation is central to this success. Her dedication is evident in her constant pursuit of methods to eliminate repetitive manual tasks, aligning with PrintFlow's proficiency in process automation. Her diligence has played a pivotal role in maximizing PrintFlow’s effectiveness for the business. The team acknowledges that while they have embraced automation, many PrintFlow customers might still rely heavily on manual scheduling, missing out on the solution’s full potential.

The Master Scheduler continues, “It has been 12 months since we implemented PrintFlow in our most extensive facility. One of our KPIs was reducing at least one changeover per week per machine, and we have met that objective. We can also see a significant reduction in overtime compared to before the PrintFlow implementation. Another KPI was to reduce scheduling time, and we have achieved it by 70%, exceeding our goal. Previously, I would spend eight hours a day scheduling, and now it's approximately two and a half hours. I have automated approximately 70% of my time using PrintFlow. I now have time to onboard the additional sites and get them to at least 70% automation.”

The ultimate levels of optimization for multiplant production schedules

“The successful adoption of PrintFlow is attributed to the valuable data that the internal Radius admin team provided and their extensive efforts to govern and manage the data accuracy within Radius ERP. The introduction of PrintFlow has helped the transition from paper schedules to a more efficient digital system, empowering teams to refresh schedules and easily access comprehensive information through Radius. Lastly, the integration of Crystal Reports has further improved the system, providing valuable insights that enable teams to work more efficiently. The synergy between Radius and PrintFlow has significantly increased the team’s capacity to manage jobs and gain comprehensive insights into the newly created ecosystem dynamics,” the Business System Analyst explains.

The Business System Analyst adds, "PrintFlow has simplified our communication and provided easy access to information with a Google-like interface and useful features. We've seen a 50% reduction in scheduling-related emails, which is a huge productivity improvement. PrintFlow has proved invaluable in optimizing our production scheduling processes. Its automation and optimization capabilities eliminate errors previously seen in operations and simultaneously allow automation of the cross-plant scheduling of around 1500 jobs at any given time.”

The Master Scheduler concludes, “As someone who has been with the company for sixteen years, I have seen our production scheduling processes evolve.

Before PrintFlow, we relied heavily on tribal knowledge to guide our decision-making. While this worked to some extent, it was time-consuming. With PrintFlow, we can transfer our knowledge to the system, which has completely transformed how we operate. What used to take hours of manual work can now be achieved within a minute. It's truly remarkable, and I can't imagine returning to our old ways. PrintFlow has become an indispensable tool for our business, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to optimize their production scheduling processes.”

With Radius ERP installed across all of the Label Division facilities and a successful launch of PrintFlow at their Central Valley plants, the team aims to replicate the same success at the recently acquired facility.