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Case Study: Article Label Printing at Scale

Overview

A mid-sizedtrading company with its own in-house logistics company handling thousands of shipments dailyoperation needed a reliable, fast, and maintainablereliable way to generate article labels directly from their ERP data. Manual label creation had become a bottleneck as order volumes grew, and the team was looking for a solution that would integrate cleanly with their existing ERP system —infrastructure without overhaulingadding their infrastructure or retraining staff on new tooling.complexity.

Together with kiwi software, they deployedrolled out VeloxFactory as the rendering backboneengine ofbehind a lean,lean purpose-built labelingscanning workflow that now produces over 4,000 labels per day, fully automated and delivered straight to shop-floorthe printers.warehouse floor.

The Challenge

The company's warehouseWarehouse staff had long relied on a slow, error-prone manual process:been looking up article data in the ERP,manually, copying it into a label template,templates, and printing. As throughputthe business grew, this becameprocess acouldn't bottleneck.keep Theyup. needed:What they needed was simple:

  • Speed — labelsLabels generated in under a second per scan
  • Accuracy — dataData pulled directly from the ERP, no manual input
  • Simplicity — theAn interface hadthat to workworks with a standard barcode scanner, no keyboard required
  • Zero infrastructure overhead — noNo additional middleware, no fat clients, no complex integrations

The Solution

kiwi software developedbuilt a lightweight web interface — a single-page scanning mask — that integratesties directly withinto VeloxFactory's REST API. The whole frontend was finished in a single day. The workflow is straightforward:

  1. A warehouse employee scans an article barcode with a handheld scanner
  2. The webscanning mask sends a singleone API request to VeloxFactory, passing only the article number
  3. VeloxFactory queries the ERP database via a configured data adapter, fetchingfetches all relevant article attributesdata in real time from the connected MS SQL database
  4. The Jaspersoft report template is rendered with the live data and output as a print-ready PDF
  5. VeloxFactory dispatches the rendered label to the company's on-premises print server,server, which routes it to the nearest floor printer

The employee never touches a keyboard. Scan in, label outout. — typicallyTypically within 800 ms end-to-end.end.

Technical Setup

Component Details
Frontend Custom web scanning mask (developed by kiwi software)
Report engine VeloxFactory
Report template Jaspersoft Studio (.jrxml), designed to DIN label specs
Data source ERPMS databaseSQL Server via VeloxFactory data adapter (JDBC)sqlsrv driver)
API surfaceinput VeloxFactory REST API — articleArticle number as sole input parameteronly
Print delivery VeloxFactory Print Task →to companyon-premises print server → local printers
Daily volume ~4,000+ labels

The data adapter resolves the article number into athe full set of attributeslabel —attributes: description, unit, weight class, hazard indicators,indicators and storage zonezone. — which theThe report template then lays these out according to the company's label specification.

Results

Since going live, the labeling process has been runningruns without any manual intervention. Key outcomes:intervention:

  • ~4,000000+ labels generated and printed per day,day, fully automated
  • Label generation time reduceddown from several minutes (manual) to under 1one second
  • Error rate from manual dataData entry droppederrors toeliminated zerocompletely
  • Staff onboardingneed reducedno totraining beyond a single demonstrationwalkthrough —of the interfacescanning requires no trainingmask
  • The print server integration eliminated the need forNo local print drivers or client-sideclient software required on scanning stations

Why VeloxFactory

The deciding factor was VeloxFactory's combination of a clean REST API, native data adapter support,support and built-in print server integration.integration kiwimeant software was able to build the entire scanning frontend in a matter of days, because VeloxFactory handled everything from data resolution to print delivery. Therethere was no need for a separate middleware layer,layer aor custom rendering pipeline,pipeline. orkiwi manualsoftware connected the MS SQL database via the sqlsrv driver, configured the print queueserver management.target and had the scanning frontend running in a day.

"TheWe scanning mask took days to build. VeloxFactory didconnected the heavydatabase, lifting.set up the print target and had a working frontend the same day."
—-- kiwi software, project lead

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