Current Projects

John Menzies Distribution

is one of the UK's largest distributors of newspapers and magazines, with 26 depots across England, Scotland and N. Ireland serving 23,000 newsagents.

Dash has been supplying expertise and printing solutions to John Menzies for over 15 years and act as both consultant and supplier of technology, concepts and products.

During the last 4 years Dash has worked with John Menzies Distribution on a project to improve the efficiency and workflow of the newspaper packing and distribution warehouses that operate overnight at locations across the UK.  This major project was conceived by Menzies to give a much higher degree of flexibility in the packing of the newspaper titles for 23,000 newsagents and revolutionised the traditional methods previously used throughout the newspaper distribution industry.

Some challenges had to be met however and the printing of the Delivery Note was an area that was causing concerns. The new operation required the operator to pack the order by following instructions displayed on a computer monitor, controlled by a powerful system developed by Menzies, that dynamically allocates packing jobs to the 20 stations to meet targets times for the delivery round.  The system constantly seeks to achieve accurate delivery times by adding more packing stations to the most urgent task.

As each order is completed a delivery note needs to be printed and strapped onto the bundle, acting as both identifier  to route the bundle within the warehouse and the delivery instruction to the vehicle driver ( some customers may have multiple bundles and it is important that the driver drops off all bundles for that customer without error )

The speed of printing is critical as the operator cannot start the next job until the note has been strapped, but Menzies found that dot matrix printers were far too slow, had poor quality and were too bulky.  Conversely, laser printers, which would seem to be easily capable of this task, did not cope well with the stop start nature of the printing.  The time between prints, though only minutes caused the printers to "sleep", with the time to print the next job held until the printer "wakes up", 20 to 30 seconds later.

Dash were asked to recommend a faster printer, as this was perceived as the issue, but when Dash looked at the application in detail, it became clear that the real issue was the time to start and complete printing and required a innovative approach.

The Dash solution was to recommend the use of a specialised Thermal Label printer ( Zebra Strata LP 2684) which prints directly onto chemically treated paper using a 300dpi  eight inch wide thermal print head that has the advantage of a zero start-up time and very fast printing. It also prints on paper wide enough (8 inches) needed to allow driver fast identification on dark mornings. This type of printer is designed to operate in harsh environment such as warehouses, requires minimal operator intervention and produces high quality print and barcodes. The target print time was five seconds and the Zebra Strata easily met this.

This project has been rolling out for three years and by January 2005, six hundred and ninety printers had been installed.

This project make "Dash Computer Products" the largest supplier of Zebra Strata 2684 in the World!

SIG Trading Ltd

Recently tipped by the Daily Telegraph as the fastest growing distributors of insulation, roofing and commercial interior products in Europe. SIGs growth has been a phenomenon.  Building on a previous relationship with one of the Dash partners, SIG have been doing business with Dash for almost 10 years.  Dash supplies SIG with printers, barcode scanners and label printers for use in all parts of the business, but have been most successful in the supply of Printek FormsPro printers into the warehouse and shipping departments.

SIG needed a printer that would stand up to the rigours of the trade counter and the warehouse, for the printing of delivery notes, invoices and reports some on heavy multipart paper and David Parkinson of Dash recommended the Printek FP400 series of Ultra Heavy Duty Printers.  Printek specialise in printer for very tough and demanding applications where multipart forms are needed.  The printers are rated for continuous use and are often used in 24/7 mission critical applications.  A multi-track version is also available which offers three forms loaded at the same time, with automated stationary changing and forms cutting.

Over 400 units have now been installed throughout the UK making SIG PLC one of the worlds larger users of Printek printers.

Other worldwide users of Printek Printers include The Ford Motor Company, BAX Global and AVIS Car Rental Inc.   More Info here >>