Sinclair and Rush

A Smarter Solution You Can Count On

The Challenge: Upgrade or Replace?
For Sinclair & Rush, the largest dip molding company in the world, Oracle is the backbone of production and distribution. That means Oracle upgrades are a critical component of keeping the business on track. Unfortunately, a move to next release of the Oracle eBusiness suite made it impossible for Sinclair & Rush to continue using its label printing application without upgrading that software, too.

Joe Thomas, Director of Information Technology, was not happy. "The vendor wanted an outrageous amount of money – $70 to 80K – to upgrade the software. The new version didn't just print labels; it scanned them. That was overkill for us. With Loftware we got exactly what we needed at a much lower cost."

By moving to Loftware Print Server, Sinclair & Rush saved over $50,000 and realized a number of other benefits, as well.

Smarter Labels, Smarter Operations
Joe manages IT operations at two locations in St Louis, and label printing for 10,000 customers is an important component of his job. Sinclair & Rush prints customer-specific carton labels and production cards that tell the shop floor what to manufacture. If a customer doesn't require its own label, Sinclair & Rush prints a standard one, which includes the address to eliminate the need for a shipping label down the line. In addition, the company prints stock labels for inventory management.

"With the old software, my labels were stupid," explains Joe. "They couldn't have any formulas or incremental serial numbers, so every time I had to change a field or add a sequential number, I had to program that into Oracle. It was a real problem because of the number of customers and types of labels we handle."

Joe continues, "With Loftware Print Server, I can set up a single field name that has different contents for different labels, all without programming. The contents come directly from information in Oracle which gets passed in an XML file that goes out through the Loftware Connector."

Control Central
Loftware Print Server allows Joe to manage both St. Louis locations from his desktop. "With one click, I can get a web page for any Print Server in the network. I can check status, see the configuration, reconfigure, even reboot if I need to," Joe says. "It's really handy to be able to do it all through one interface. If we ever converted our UK and Australia offices to this system, I'd be able to do the same thing all the way across the globe."

It's also much easier for Joe to set up a new printer. Before, it took him over an hour to add a printer in the UNIX system and create a UNIX print queue. With Loftware Print Server, he can plug a new printer into an existing print server or a network connection in a matter of minutes. Joe imagines the possibilities, "We'll be able to add an RFID printer to print RFID labels without any changes to our system. We're ready if a big company like Wal-Mart needs our products."

Dependability from Start to Finish
Another thing that impressed Joe was Loftware's support team. He had one problem with installation and called the Loftware support group. The specialist soon determined that the problem had nothing to do with Loftware. Nevertheless, he worked though the issue, taking responsibility for making sure the system worked, and the two figured it out right then over the phone. Joe recalls the incident, "Not only was he really good … that's the only support call I've ever had to make. The system just keeps running. There's no day-to-day maintenance, no cleaning up old label logs. It just runs itself."

Thanks to Loftware, Sinclair & Rush:

Avoided spending thousands on unnecessary software
Eliminated hours of Oracle programming
Gained the ability to print custom labels … without customization
Made significant cuts to the cost – in time and money – of print management and maintenance
Positioned itself for RFID and centralized label printing around the world