Ricoh Canada's warehouses utilize FabSoft's Reform in order to improve efficiency
Ricoh Canada Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ricoh Corporation. They are pioneers in the development of computer-networked and digital multifunctional document systems and market leaders in colour and black & white digital imaging systems, facsimile products, printers, scanners, digital duplicators, document management and wide format engineering systems. They also offer a wide variety of document and printing solutions directly and through strategic alliances with companies like FabSoft, who has been working with Ricoh for over 12 years. Recently, Ricoh Canada decided to improve some document processes in their own facility, in particular, their warehouses. They immediately recognized that they could use FabSoft’s Reform as their solution.
The Problem
Ricoh Canada has numerous locations across the country, which includes major warehouse locations, as well as smaller warehouses within their sales branches. These locations receive countless orders for equipment, and pick tickets are printed that instruct warehouse staff which items need to be shipped to their customers or resellers. Previously, multi-part pre-printed forms were being purchased and inventoried at all of their locations and pick tickets were printed using line printers. The drawbacks with this method are obvious: frequent printer jams, wasting parts of multi-part forms, space is needed to store forms, changing or redesigning forms is expensive, delays because forms must be burst, slow print speeds. Additionally, the format of the pick tickets was disorganized and consisted of many pages. This made it confusing and difficult for the warehouse staff to keep track of what they had picked and what still needed to be picked. By implementing FabSoft’s Reform, Ricoh Canada was able to improve this inefficient process.
The Solution
The main problem that Ricoh Canada was facing was that it needed to replace the use of multi-part, pre-printed forms and line printers. Using Reform, they were able to recreate a more professional looking form that could be printed on plain paper with a high speed MFP or laser printer. They also needed to ensure that this new solution could be utilized in all of their locations throughout the country. Ricoh Canada uses a Baan ERP system, which does mainframe printing. In order for Reform to be used across multiple locations, a ‘printer’ or print queue was created on their mainframe for each location that sends the jobs to the Reform server. Because the Baan output is not uniquely recognizable in any way by the content, the Baan 'printer' that was setup for each location uses a different LPR queue name. By using FabSoft’s LPD Server option, this unique LPR queue name from each job is automatically associated to the right form. This enables Reform to know which output device to send the job to out of dozens and dozens of devices all over the country. Each location also needed slight differences to accommodate language and other specific requirements, so forms were made for every location with slight tweaks to reflect these needs. Now, an administrator simply has to print a pick ticket and Reform will capture the print stream from the Baan ERP and format and print the document to the needed MFP or laser printer. The pick ticket that is created is organized and legible, making it easier for those that are handling the order. This includes the warehouse personnel, who use this pick ticket to pick and bundle the needed items; the shippers, who use the pick tickets to verify the orders before sending them out; and the customers or resellers receiving the items, who receive the pick tickets with their orders as packing slips.
A representative from Ricoh Canada says, “The bottom line is that it works more easily than the old method. It’s faster, quieter, and easier to read, uses fewer pages and presents a more professional image to our customers and partners, etc. In the future, we can convey marketing messages using this exact same infrastructure or even have our pick-lists re-ordered to sort multiple jobs into an aggregated job, sorted by aisles, then bins, etc. (almost like a postal sort, to improve efficiency in the warehouse) and then have the shipping confirmation and packing slip print elsewhere to verify the orders. We already have a multi part form configuration for our main warehouse.”
Three locations (Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa) have been using the Reform solution exclusively for most of the year and additional locations will follow suit by the end of the year.
The Benefits
Ownership through local uniqueness – Since each of the branches/warehouses had input as to what their requirements were for forms, there is now a sudden sense of ownership in handling the documents. Before, there was irrelevant content and these documents were handled as a rote chore, without understanding their value. Now, they can have the extra statements that pertain to their region.
Consistent, Professional Looking Documents – Even though regional differences were accommodated, there is now an overall level of consistency in appearance. Previously, items that needed to meet deadlines from various warehouses across the country looked and were handled differently. Now, the orders will all generally arrive with similar paperwork, which helps the customers' receiving teams assemble orders shipped from different locations and understand exactly what they have and what might be back-ordered. The new professional looking documents also enhance the company’s image as well as employee morale.
Improved Productivity – In the past, there was so much manual paperwork that it created a level of frustration. When pick-tickets were unclear or pages were missing, it would cause many downstream communication errors and sometimes orders were even shipped twice. Warehouse personnel used to carry stacks of orders with unclear text that ran off the edge of the page sometimes. As a result, this created uncertainty and double-checking became a regular function. Since documents are now formatted better and contain fewer pages, work is completed much faster. Documents can be quickly found within a stack and items can be picked with confidence. When querying the warehouse staff about the new process, the number one response was that they felt they "had more control over their activities". Even the administrators in the office can prepare their orders faster by reviewing what is on the screen with what is on the page. They can flip through multiple orders easily in order to resolve any issues that must be straightened out before committing inventory to ship.
Cost Savings – Ricoh Canada was incurring tremendous costs from managing pre-printed forms and line printers. They would constantly have to purchase, inventory and load forms and worry about paper jams and expensive ink cartridges. With Reform, forms are printed to regular paper with MFPs or lasers that are faster and more reliable. Changes can be made to forms on-demand without having to worry about ordering new forms and wasting old ones.
