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December 2014 • SMT Magazine 65 HIGH-reLIAbILITY, Pb-Free, HALOGeN-Free SOLder continues ArTiClE The situation is likely to become worse, be- cause the industry continues to consolidate. Plus, acquired operations in emerging coun- tries may bring with them their own labeling infrastructure, systems, and processes. The absence of an enterprise-wide and cen- trally managed solution for products manufac- tured in disparate locations generates routine rework. Homegrown workarounds, numerous extract modes, and broadly fragmented label- ing knowledge are often the result. This can lead to conflicting organizational behaviors, brand inconsistencies, mislabeling, and process failures with very costly implications. There exists, however, a straightforward ap- proach to solving these problems to meet the next generations of opportunity. The cure: An enterprise-centric Approach 1. Consolidation and Centralization Electronics manufacturers with dispersed, departmental, standalone and multi-regional labeling systems face a daunting task of meeting enterprise-wide con- sistency and control if the deci- sion is made to sustain these systems. Fixing redundancy of all these separate solutions over many departments and across all labeling geographies is a time-intensive initiative that, in the end, does noth- ing to resolve the underlying problems of a decentralized labeling approach. Consoli- dation around a centralized system, tied to enterprise ap- plications and data, insures corporate-wide labeling consis- tencies, compliance, and security. Electronics manufacturing compa- nies need the ability to easily and quickly man- age label data, make label changes, comply with evolving standards, and flexibly support new labeling requirements. Allowing multiple loca- tions and suppliers access to centralized data to seamlessly produce labels remotely is crucial to business continuity. Utilizing this central- ized approach to label data allows businesses to scale globally and remotely, and drives label production from any of its sites. 2. Integration Electronics products manufacturers today know they need—and they already have—sys- tems for version control. This means many elec- tronics manufacturers have systems in place for compliance and regulatory standards with ap- provals, workflow, revisions, and documented copies; and, they have the right people already in place who are familiar with these systems. With this in mind, it isn't practical to repli- cate data. Instead, it makes significantly greater sense to simply use the label data in these ex- isting applications for the data to generate the labels, so the ability to connect and integrate to all key sources of label data is essential. Business partners, too, need to leverage their own sources of label data, and extend la- bels and data to their partners. Through inte- gration, an unprecedented level of flexibility to enable the use of corporate or partner data to create, manage, and print mission- critical barcode labels across the global supply chain becomes possible. In some enterprise solutions scenarios that in- clude WYSIWYG design and browser-based capabilities, business users can even take ownership of the design pro- cess. This eliminates the need for IT at each print location to get involved or write code to handle new label creation and label changes, resulting in significant cost and time savings. 3. Automation Based on Business Rules In addition to application integration, the forward-looking solution in electronics prod- ucts manufacturing labeling looks to all major enterprise applications to drive label printing. To ensure an effective global supply chain strat- egy, customers must consider how labeling in- tersects with evolving contributors such as glo- balization of manufacturing, safety and quality Electronics manufacturing companies need the ability to easily and quickly manage label data, make label changes, comply with evolving standards, and flexibly support new labeling requirements. " "