OrganizationThe Emmi Group (Emmi) is the largest milkprocessor and leading producer of dairy productsin Switzerland. Headquartered in the central Swisscity of Lucerne, Emmi has approximately 5,000employees worldwide and global revenues ofaround 5 billion Swiss Francs.

Emmi products are sold around the world andmore than a quarter of all revenues come fromsales in international markets. Emmi employsaround 1,800 employees in overseas subsidiariesthroughout Europe, North- and South America.

The importance of documents

Printed documents are used in nearly every marketsector. For companies in the dairy industry, documentfailures can directly affect product quality.

As soon as products leave the factory and enter thesupply chain, they are tracked. This is especiallyimportant with cheeses and other milk productswhose flavor and texture continue to develop andchange over time. Some varieties need to ripen for sixto twelve months before they are ready to ship; otherproducts will spoil if they’re not consumed promptlyand refrigerated every step of the way. Productiondocuments and printed barcode stickers help Emmiemployees produce a better finished product.

Distributed operations, centralized ITRegardless of where Emmi products areproduced, warehoused, or sold, nearly all of the ITsystems that support these business processesare located in Emmi’s main data center inOstermundigen. Here, the IT staff maintains andsupports the company’s enterprise-wide businessapplications as well as the many Windows-basedprograms used by Emmi employees around theworld.

The majority of Emmi’s worldwide help deskpersonnel are also located in the Ostermundigendata center. This is the nerve center of Emmi’s IT

infrastructure.But when it came toprinting, this team wasdependent on Windows printservers located in dozens of remoteoffices and serviced by local staff.

With Microsoft print servers, it was difficult tocontrol the entire environment. For example,when an end user printed a document, he or shehad no way no way to know if it had arrived at theremote device. Likewise, any problem thatoccurred would be extremely difficult totroubleshoot. For efficient management andcontrol of print processes, the IT staff needed theability to monitor and control all worldwideprinting from the central data center.

A single point of control

The IT team, under the direction of Walter Stadel-mann, conducted a thorough review of themarket offerings and issued a Request forProposal (RFP) for an enterprise-wide outputmanagement solution. After speaking with manyproviders, Emmi selected the VPSX® softwaresolution from Levi, Ray & Shoup, Inc. (LRS).

“We looked at a lot of vendors, but LRS simply hadthe best solution,” explains Stadelmann. Goingbeyond centralized print management, the teamdevised a way to integrate the LRS software withtheir existing Assentis document compositionpackage to produce dynamic forms. In thecoming years, Emmi will further expand this inte-gration to new SAP applications. The combinedsolution enables output delivery to printers,email, SMS, online archives or all of these destina-tions simultaneously.

The LRS software not only met the company’simmediate requirements, but has proven flexibleenough to address their future needs.

The leading Swiss dairyproducts company needed a solution to provide fast,reliable delivery of key business documents. LRS®software helps Emmi reduceunnecessary document costswhile ensuring a safe andefficient supply chain for theirtime-sensitive line of products.

C A S E S T U D Y

L E V I , R A Y & S H O U P , I N C .

Emmi Group

Lean printing infrastructureThe decision to implement VPSX software was the first step toward acomplete renovation of Emmi’s printing infrastructure. The goalswere straightforward: simplify the complex network environment,improve output reliability, and reduce costs.

Before implementing VPSX software, Emmi routed all of their printtraffic over Windows print servers. Now they have eliminated theseservers and are taking advantage of the VPSX solution’s ability tocompress print streams and optimize network bandwidth. Thoughthey originally implemented the solution to manage documentsfrom ERP systems, it worked so well that they now use it to manageall Windows user printing as well.

Eliminating Windows print servers also simplified the way printdrivers were handled in Emmi’s environment. VPSX Print DriverManagement (PDM) functionality enables the software toautomatically provision the correct driver version for a givenworkstation. Print driver incompatibilities are a leading cause ofprinting problems in Windows environments, resulting in increasedsupport costs and wasted time for end users. VPSX software helpedEmmi staff avoid these expenses.

Print2Me: improved security & cost savingsAnother aspect of the output management effort was the desire toconsolidate the overall printer fleet. Like many companies, Emmihad a wide variety of printer makes and models installed in itsremote offices. Such heterogeneous fleets lack a standard set offeatures and cannot take advantage of economies of scale withregard to consumable and service costs.

Working with Ricoh and LRS partner Genius Bytes, the Emmi teamdeveloped a fully integrated output management concept called“Print2Me.” All output, regardless of origin, is routed to the VPSXserver. Some print jobs — production orders and other time-sensitive documents, for example — are automatically routed to theappropriate printer. User-generated documents are held in a secureVPSX queue until a user swipes a security badge to release theirprint jobs to the nearest Ricoh multifunction device. The system canalso enforce cost-saving defaults like monochrome and duplexprinting.

The project helped Emmi reduce the number of devices in itsprinting fleet by 40%. “It was a long process to eliminate all thesingle-user devices,” Walter Stadelmann recalls. “But the effort nowhelps us save over 100,000 Francs per year while improving theproductivity of users and IT staff alike.”

Precise planning — perfect printingAssisting the Emmi IT team was Dietmar Neidhardt, a Senior SoftwareConsultant from LRS’ Munich office. “Emmi’s implementation showsthe flexibility of the LRS solution and its ability to seamlessly integratewith established customer environments. During an onsite consultingproject, we enhanced the basic VPSX functionality to provide highly-tailored, customer-specific process integration. The resulting solutionprovides full print status monitoring at every stage of output deliveryfrom the originating application to the output device.”

This customization enabled the LRS solution to update output jobparameters based on values in the Emmi database, create dynamicdocument watermarks, and simultaneously deliver output in bothprinter- and archive-ready form. “For the finishing touch, we addedthe ability to automatically analyze and categorize any printproblem that occurred, attach the relevant log data, and create aHelp desk ticket,” explains Neidhardt.

Herr Stadelmann has a simpler way to describe the solution: “It just works.”

© Copyright 2013 Levi, Ray & Shoup, Inc. All rights reserved. LRS, LRS in the diamond device, and VPSX are registered trademarks of Levi, Ray & Shoup, Inc. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. GeniusBytes is a registered trademark of EHT Vermogensverwaltung UG. Assentis is a registered trademark of Assentis Technologies AG in the United States, Switzerland and other countries. Ricoh is a registered trademark of Ricoh Company, Ltd. SAP is a registered trademark of SAP AG inGermany and in several other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

UNITED STATES AUSTRALIA GERMANY ITALY SINGAPORE SPAIN UNITED KINGDOM

www.VPSX.com

L E V I , R A Y & S H O U P , I N C .

"We looked at a lot of vendors, but LRS simply had the best solution."