Printers to minimise Black Friday delivery bottlenecks

Shipping problems and warehouse delays have all marred previous Black Friday and Cyber Monday successes, leading Printronix to claim its line matrix technology is still the best solution for minimising bottlenecks on the fulfilment frontline, especially during peak periods and retail spikes.

Xavier Nicolaï, marketing manager of Printronix EMEA says that when it comes to printing picking lists and legible, multipart order forms there’s few devices to match the 2,000 lines per minute of its P8000 machines.

“One of our distribution customers makes over 1,000 deliveries a day, which is no mean feat when each order consists of multiple items. He produces more than 8,000 documents daily related to these deliveries, from pallet labelling and invoices to corresponding delivery notes, and all are done on multi-copy forms,” says Xavier.

“With eight of our P8000 devices installed, he is able to prevent bottlenecks forming at goods out. And by using multi-part forms, he saves time by replicating the same document 2-3 times in one pass. With a laser printer, for example, it would take him 2-3 times as long to achieve the same thing,” claims Xavier.

“When you’re faced with busy shopping spikes like Black Friday, you absolutely need a printer that will cope with the order and picking demands in your warehouse,” says Xavier. “Our line matrix devices deliver unparalleled uptime reliability and were designed for heavy usage and high print volumes.”

Rugged capabilities

While line matrix has been around for some time, there’s still little to touch its performance in the demanding field of logistics. Its rugged capabilities can withstand harsh environments prone to extremes in temperature, dust, and dirt.

Other print technologies like laser are less able to withstand the abuse of busy warehouse environments. What makes line matrix printers better able to perform in demanding production/logistics areas are their sealed electronics, a robust metal construction and their intrinsic stored energy technology that uses powerful magnets to move a bank of print hammers.

Equally significant to the reliable performance of line matrix printers is that their consumables have a service life twice as long as laser technologies. For one of Printronix’s customers, Cercle Vert, the time saved in multi-part printing and the reduced costs of consumables translated into savings of €1m in five years.

Printronix also produces a range of serial dot matrix desktop printers, capable of reliably producing lower print volumes of transactional supply chain documents in rigorous office and industrial environments.