Chr. Hansen Adopts NiceLabel Technology

Global bioscience company, Chr. Hansen, has selected NiceLabel, a leading global developer of label design software and label management systems, to provide its web-based label management solution.

Chr. Hansen develops and produces cultures, enzymes, probiotics and natural colors for the food, confectionary, beverages, dietary supplements and animal feed industries. More than one billion people consume its products across the world, resulting in 3,000 label print requests per day across 30 different locations. The NiceLabel Label Management System, with its universal label templates and label variant technology, will reportedly allow Chr. Hansen to reduce and consolidate its label templates, remove inconsistencies and improve workflow and quality assurance when designing and printing its labels.

“We operate in the life sciences industry which means our processes, including labeling, must be validated according to the criteria set forth by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said Jens Berth, senior IT project manager at Chr. Hansen. “We need to ensure that our label variants, which are the exact finished labels for our products, are fully approved by our QA staff and cannot be changed once the variant is created. NiceLabel’s variant technology enables this so I can be confident that each label is fully compliant.”

The NiceLabel solution integrates with Chr. Hansen’s enterprise resource planning system, SAP, using NiceLabel’s SAP ABAP package.

The built-in label template approval process, with a delayed publishing workflow, allows labels to be built in the NiceLabel system and approved in the NiceLabel document management system (DMS). Label information is sent to SAP so that the correct templates, variants and versions are used in each batch. In addition, if an unapproved label is used, the system issues a warning, ensuring both compliance and traceability for all label versions.

“Having a web printing application that lets us print the label job that was previously created by SAP is key for the way we work — we have hundreds of workers across many countries creating orders in SAP all the time,” said Berth. “In addition, the NiceLabel solution has allowed us to reduce the number of templates we use, making the process much easier to manage and spot any errors than previously.”

“Legacy labeling technology systems at Chr. Hansen were leading to high costs and a cumbersome process,” said Lee Patty, vice president and general manager NiceLabel Americas. “With labeling being a business-critical function, it made sense to modernize. Now, with our label management system and ABAP package for SAP, Chr. Hansen benefits from high levels of integration at a lower cost because their IT team doesn’t have to spend several months doing tight integration.”

For more information, visit www.nicelabel.com/chr-hansen.