www.nicelabel.com
Industry: Electronics
Solution: NiceLabel LMS
Challenges
• Lack of standardization
• Varying levels of integration
• Hard-coded label formats
• Lack of version history
Solutions
• NiceLabel label management system
• Integrated with PLM, MES and ERP
systems
• Business rules & logic handled by the
Automation module
Results
• ROI in less than 4 months
• Label print time reduced from 8 seconds
to 300 milliseconds
• Scalable solution used at 22 sites with a
total of 1,200 printers with continued roll
out
• Offered as a best-practice service in
other Siemens’ factories
Case Study
Background
Siemens standardizes labeling
across its global factories to
drive new levels of efficiency
The Manufacturing Operations Service Delivery department
within Siemens has a straightforward objective. The depart-
ment is responsible for IT for all the systems, infrastruc-
ture and architecture that enable Siemens to manufacture
products across their factories. Their goal is to provide IT
systems and services that perform in as standardized and
efficient a manner as possible, applying best practices to
make sure things run as they should.
Siemens’ labeling-as-a-service solution, powered by
NiceLabel’s LMS provides centralized labeling that
can easily deliver critical real-time labels to highly
automated manufacturing and logistics environments.
www.nicelabel.com
We sit within a network of Motion Control factories, and even at our main site there were three different
labeling solutions.
Leon McDonnell, Service Delivery Manager
Fragmented landscape poses barrier to best practice
One of the areas the group was looking to standardize was on-demand label printing in the factories. However, the
Siemens environment at the time made this effort challenging. “Five years ago, the labeling set-up was heteroge-
neous and complex,” relates Leon McDonnell, Service Delivery Manager, Manufacturing Operations for the Motion
Control Business. “We sit within a network of Motion Control factories, and even at our main site there were three
different labeling solutions. More broadly speaking, there were five or six solutions to print labels.” Some solutions
were off-the-shelf and others were developed locally and only for specific vendors. Applying best practices was out
of the question with the current set-up, as each factory had a tailored solution.
There was also a wide range of label and office printers at each factory. “A lot of these factories had been masters of
their own domains and followed their own purchasing or hardware approach. You can imagine any variable, and we
would have found variants of that variable across the factories,” comments Leon.
Multilingual labels a challenge
As Siemens is an international organization, they need to produce labels in multiple languages. The labeling solu-
tions couldn’t consistently handle Chinese characters and in some cases the designers had to transform them
into pictures. At one point, they had 250 pictures they had to maintain. Having to maintain a variety of hard-coded
layouts slowed down the label change process and placed a heavy burden on the IT department. In the worst case,
they would have to alter hundreds of hard-coded layouts manually in the event of a change request. Factories
hard-coded the same label format several times in order to accommodate the requirements of the different systems
and printer brands they had in place.
Lack of version history made quality control difficult
With the legacy systems they had in place, factories didn’t have a proper change history. If they needed to go back
and locate the previous version of a label this had to be done manually, for example by creating multiple versions of
the same layout file in order to keep track of the revisions. Should an error in a label occur, the subsequent inves-
tigation was both time-consuming and labor-intensive, as it was virtually impossible to identify where in the label
production process the error had occurred.
Challenges
www.nicelabel.com
NiceLabel offers a single solution that meets
all requirements
Siemens decided to use the NiceLabel label manage-
ment system to integrate with their PLM, MES and ERP
systems and roll out a standardized label production and
printing set-up for the Motion Control factories. They
were able to accomplish this with a centralized instance
of the NiceLabel label management system.
The NiceLabel label management system is deployed
on a private Siemens Cloud. A single server hosts the
NiceLabel Document Management System (DMS) and
a handful of servers host the NiceLabel integration
system. Some plants that have poorer internet connec-
tivity, such as in China, have decentralized production
servers and occasionally synchronize with the central-
ized solution.
A label designer that empowers business users
All labels that are connected to the bill of materials
(BOM), such as product identification labels, are initially
designed using Siemens’ CAD software, NX Design,
and stored in Teamcenter, Siemens’ PLM system. NX
Design also creates an XML file that is imported into
the NiceLabel label designer. This means that 70% of
the label design work is done before any design work is
started in the NiceLabel designer. All non-BOM related
labels are designed by business users from scratch
using the NiceLabel label designer. The label designer’s
intuitive interface means that business users can create
and change labels without IT assistance. They can easily
create labels and deploy these label templates across
factories.
NiceLabel integrates seamlessly with PLM,
MES and ERP
NiceLabel’s integration system is connected to
Siemens’ ERP system (SAP) and various MES at the
factory level. Although Siemens factories use different
solutions for their MES, NiceLabel allows for the use of
universal label templates that can be printed from any of
the business systems. As a result of these flexible label
templates, factories have to maintain fewer template
variations, process fewer change requests and enjoy
improved label consistency and compliance.
The level of integration with Siemens’ other business
systems has also enhanced productivity. Whereas under
the legacy integration methods labels could take eight
seconds to print, that time has been reduced to an average
of 300 milliseconds to print each label. By implementing
NiceLabel’s label management system, Siemens has
been able to reduce the overall complexity of its internal
business applications. Prior to NiceLabel, the business
applications had to support multiple printers. Now they can
handle business rules and logic using the label manage-
ment system’s Automation module. The Service Delivery
group has also been able to maximize the speed of
implementation, while minimizing deployment costs.
Return on investment in less than four months
Prior to deciding to purchase NiceLabel, Siemens con-
ducted an internal analysis estimating that the return on
investment from software standardization and IT savings
would be less than four months. Now that they have im-
plemented NiceLabel, they have met their original ROI ex-
pectations, and they continue to experience substantial
savings on a daily basis due to printing process improve-
ments and added flexibility in hardware procurement.
The initial installation and standardization effort worked
so well that it was regarded as best practice by other
business units. The group then decided to offer Nice-
Label as a service to other factories within the vast
Siemens manufacturing landscape.
Solution
To achieve the desired level of standardization and flexibility, Siemens would need to implement a centralized
platform for their label production and printing that could be rolled out across all factories.
About NiceLabel
Established in 1993, NiceLabel is a leading global developer of
label design software and label management systems that help
companies of all sizes improve the quality, speed and efficiency
of their labeling, while reducing cost.
With the help of our label management systems, organizations
are able to digitally transform their entire label printing and pro-
duction process. The result is a leaner, more agile operation that
enables companies to respond more quickly to changing market
conditions and requirements, get products to market faster and
compete more effectively in the sectors where they do business.
www.nicelabel.com
Americas
+1 262 784 2456
[email protected]
EMEA
+386 4280 5000
[email protected]
Germany
+49 6104 68 99 80
[email protected]
China
+86 21 6249 0371
[email protected]
To learn more about NiceLabel’s enterprise solutions, visit www.nicelabel.com/electronics
IRIS: Labeling-as-a-service across Siemens
Once they realized the potential of the technology, the
group offered a new service called IRIS with NiceLabel
LMS as a core component to other business units. “Iris
was a messenger of the gods in Greek mythology. It’s
associated with something being completely transparent
and fast, which we thought was an appropriate name
for what we wanted to accomplish: delivering critical
real-time labels to highly automated manufacturing and
logistics environments,” states Michael Buchmann, the
solution architect for IRIS. And the service has proved to
be a popular one. “The service is already in use across 22
factories in 4 different business units across 6 coun-
tries in Europe and in China. They are also working with
numerous other businesses to establish the business
case for applying it elsewhere.”
NiceLabel’s scalability makes it all possible
“We’ve gone from 1 site and 20 printers as part of a pilot
5 years ago, to 22 sites and 1,200 printers today with
continued rollout. The largest site prints 150,000 labels a
week on 200 printers. And it’s all driven via the NiceLabel
integration system,” states Michael. The scalability has
also meant that Leon’s group can offer different levels
of service depending on the business unit in question.
“Our standard service uses the centralized private cloud
solution shared across Siemens. But for customers who
are demanding guaranteed low latency or high availabil-
ity requirements, we can offer a local production server
solution for large manufacturing sites and for areas with
poor internet connectivity,” states Leon. Being able to
adapt the solution to the needs of the various business
units and factories is a clear benefit for Siemens and one
of the main reasons for the Labeling-as-a-service model
being so widely adopted within the organization.
“One of the success stories we’ve had involved one of
the warehouses. They wanted to use a wireless printing
device, which would have meant duplicating their printing
system. With NiceLabel, they were able to use the same
system for desktop and mobile printing. They didn’t have
to do all of the investment for duplicating the system,
which was a significant savings for them.”
A service with tremendous potential
IRIS labeling-as-a-service has been so successful, that
it has been identified as a digital lighthouse service by
Siemens Production and Logistics Excellence group. What
began as a solution to solve a local problem has now
been re-architected, scaled and packaged as a model
service offering to bring standardization to label produc-
tion and printing processes across Siemens’ manufactur-
ing operations. “We’re currently working on a marketing
and sales strategy to sell this as a service globally. Right
now, we service about 10% of Siemens’ manufacturing
estate. But the potential is much greater,” Leon concludes.
Results
With NiceLabel, they were able to use the same system for desktop and mobile printing. They didn’t have to
do all of the investment for duplicating the system, which was a significant savings for them.”
Leon McDonnell, Service Delivery Manager
