Wixon Shortens Lead Time, Increases Production Speeds With Variable Data Coding Solutions

Wixon, Inc., with headquarters in St. Francis, Wis., bills itself as “a 100-year-old company with the innovative drive of a start-up.” Throughout its history, Wixon has maintained attention to service, detail and the customer as its top priorities, and on many occasions, innovation has helped Wixon rise to new challenges to satisfy customer expectations.

In 2004, Wixon invested in Videojet® DataFlex® thermal transfer overprinters, and CLARiNET® and CLARiSOFT® packaging coding management (PCM) software from Videojet Technologies Inc. to enable variable data coding on its variety of packaging substrates. The solutions helped Wixon to meet increased customer demand for customization, shorten lead times to provide packaged products to customers and increase the speeds of its production lines.

“Today, we can run anywhere from 20 to 70 packages per minute,” says Rob Marlette, Wixon maintenance manager. “This is up to 40 packages per minute more than we used to be capable of with our old process, which represents a 133 percent increase. We can basically set the printers and forget them, which is exactly what you want to happen on a packaging line.”