When you have several hundred people that are involved in this process, you need to ensure availability of the right information and data at all times. Esko WebCenter enables us to do exactly that.
Vandemoortele Optimizes Artwork Approval Cycles with WebCenter
To speed up artwork approval cycles and improve control at the same time, Vandemoortele opted for Esko WebCenter.
Case Study Summary
Vandemoortele is a leading European food group that manufactures and sells high-quality food products. The company was founded in 1899 and is now a family controlled food group with Belgian roots and a European outlook. It occupies a leading position in its two core businesses: ‘Bakery Products’ and ‘Margarines, Culinary Oils & Fats’.
Vandemoortele’s margarines, oils, donuts, pastry and patisserie products find their way into just about everyone’s life under its own brands, including Belolive, Diamant, Reddy, Ossewit, Banquet d’Or and Croustifrance.
In addition, there are many Vandemoortele products that are delivered to professional users, retail customers and supermarkets under private labels.
Rethinking approval cycles
Handling well over a thousand design changes per year in packaging, Vandemoortele needs to be in perfect control of its artwork, data and workflow at all times.
Due to a number of acquisitions of companies and brands throughout the years and with several hundred people involved in the process, artwork approval cycles proved to be a complex environment.
Vandemoortele was looking to optimize its artwork approval cycles to be able to shorten production lead time and reduce both waste and costs – without compromising the quality of its packaging.
Esko WebCenter allows us to keep artwork approval cycles in line with our production cycles. Not missing any important deadlines reduces both waste and costs.
Approval tool for fast decision making
Vandemoortele opted for Esko WebCenter, a unique and powerful web-based platform that administers the preproduction approval cycle for packaging as well as the product life cycle.
Every new or revised piece of packaging at Vandemoortele is now handled through WebCenter. A predefined flow is automatically set up for the project, including tasks and deadlines.
The system automatically notifies the users assigned to the project to ensure tasks are completed in time and nothing is overlooked, such as updates to nutritional or legal texts or design elements that affect technical production requirements.
WebCenter is our preferred approval decision-making tool. All parties involved in the approval process can see the specific information they need to see in time and can take immediate action. This speeds up the approval cycle in a very efficient and effective way.
Ensure efficiency and continuity
The faster approval cycles greatly impact Vandemoortele’s operations. Esko WebCenter allows Vandemoortele to align packaging artwork changes with production cycles, without missing any important deadlines. By ordering at exactly the right moment, Vandemoortele minimizes any under- or overstocking and saves waste and costs.
The increased transparency that WebCenter provides to Vandemoortele also benefits the 450 people using the customized system – including suppliers, such as repro houses and printers. Having all information up to date and available at any given moment makes the workflow much more reliable and predictable.
Being much more flexible in addressing changes and new trends is critical, since more product versions are being created, resulting in shorter run lengths and more frequent design changes.
At the same time, a faster time to market allows Vandemoortele to remain competitive and profitable.
