Best way to Print Labels

[Former Member]

Hello all,

I am involved in a brand new SAP ERP 2004 implementation. We havent started our development as yet.

We are confused to take a decision what is the best way to print labels(Picking, Packing and Shipping). Currently the client prints about 250 different shipping labels(different layouts) all thorughout the world for customer compliance.

Whether Adobe Interactive Forms is worth it to buy and use it or anyother 3rd party label printing systems could be used that would do the job easily and effectively.

I am confused how nomally the label printing is done within the companies. Can anybody guide on these lines?

Thanks,

Romit.

[thomas_jung]

There are some OSS notes, but restrictions of high-volume printing using the Adobe tool. I would look into those before considering that tool.

If you have that many different labels (probably with multiple label sizes and printer types?), I would probably look to a 3rd party tool. There are several on the market. At my company we have used Loftware for years. It has served its purpose well. We had to write the interfaces from SAP to Loftware, but they fairly simple. The design tool is excellent. Every plant we have uses different printer types (zebra, intermec, etc). Loftware makes handling these different printer types a breeze.

[Former Member]

Thanks a lot Thomas!

Can you pinpoint exactly what would be the work within SAP and the work in Loftware?

I got to estimate the development effort that would be required within SAP and Loftware.

Lemme put it in this way.

What is the proces flow from the application until the Labels are printed ?

[thomas_jung]

Here is the flow that we have.

Of course you have to design the labels in Loftware. It is a WYSIWYG designer. It typically only takes 15-20 minutes even for a complex label.

1. We have a custom print programs that are either driven by custom Transactions or configured as the print program in Standard SAP output management.

2. These programs collect the data for the label and create a Unicode XML file. I have a create a single ABAP class that takes care of all the technical details of creating the XML.

3. We have configuration tables in SAP that map customers and plants to their specific labels. We also have specific language versions. However the user only works with a logical label name. Ie they select MATERIAL_DOCUMENT_LABEL, but it might really be CustomerX_Matdoc_Plant_0060 in Loftware.

4. The files are FTP'd to the Loftware server (also done by that same single ABAP Class).

5. Loftware picks up the XML file and merges the data with the selected label and produces the output. You use the Loftware monitoring tools to administer the output.

There is another process we have. For adhoc labels (like BIN and address labels), we have some On-Demand transactions. We have a webservice that exposes the Loftware API (we wrote the webservice in .Net) to ABAP. Our programs can then call to Loftware and request the label defintion (fields and field lenghts). Using BSP we dynamically generate an input screen for the user to create the label on the fly. Instead of creating the XML file and FTPing it, we simply send the data back through the same webservice.

[Former Member]

We have a simpler set up.

We use Loftware to design the labels. We then save them as a 'Printer Output File'. This file is used to create the SAPScript. You can then print directly from SAP using the new SAPScript.

[thomas_jung]

>We have a simpler set up.

Simpler is in the eye of the beholder

We probably did spend more effort initially, but now every Tom, Dick, and Harry at the local plants can create and design labels. They don't even need access to SAP and our development group doesn't get bothered with new requests.

This was important for us where we have only 10 custom transactions, but out of those 10 transactions we produce over 200 different label types (customer specific layouts - some of which are updated on an almost monthly basis).

For those interested, this is a white paper on Loftware's website that describes some aspects of SAP Integration.

http://www.loftware.com/index.cfm/handlers?GID=14&ContentID=168

[Former Member]

Wow ! This is a very interesting approach. One of my client used Zebra printers for printing labels and the advantage they thought they were getting was cost per lable (being able to use exact paper size for each label) and ruggedness of lables (because of use of themal printing on special paper). But maintaining these labels was heck of a job, it was very difficult to create a label that works on all models.

I don't know as much about printing labels as Thomas do, but this loftware approach seems worth exploring.

Cheers,

Sanjeev