Projects

Ridgid Products

"The operating expenses for our full-service, in-house graphics center were growing each year. We were facing equipment and technology upgrades, storage costs, staffing… it became really cost prohibitive to do all the work ourselves. We researched all of our options and we were thrilled to find the solutions that Great Lakes had to offer. They were able to take care of our enormous printing needs, production, storage requirements, and manage a complex distribution program to our 7000 distributors. This has been a cost effective, efficient and well managed program."

Ridge Tool Company

The Company

RIDGID Products, a division of Ridge Tool Company, is a Virginia-based manufacturer of the popular RIDGID/Kollmann line of drain cleaning products and accessories. Ridge Tool is the world's leading manufacturer of professional quality pipe and tube working tools serving the plumbing, mechanical, construction, HVAC and facility maintenance industries.

The Challenge

While RIDGID Products manufactures a variety of top-quality drain cleaning products such as shop vacs and snakes, a critical component of the company's production line process is the important manual packs that accompany them.

The manual packs for RIDGID's products include the product manual, instruction sheets, parts list, safety sheets and Independent Service Center list. These packs are considered a component piece of the end product and must not only adhere to product and packaging specifications, but must also have accurate safety rules and regulations in order to comply to safety regulations of the Federal Government.

However, when RIDGID's parent company, Ridge Tool, decided to close the company's in-house graphics center, RIDGID needed a new system to ensure its manual packs were produced and delivered to the manufacturing plant on time – or risk closing down the production line.

The Solution

AKSESS Inventory Driver & GLDirect

In order to efficiently manage the production and delivery of these important product manual packs, and keep production going full-speed, RIDGID Products chose GLI's AKSESS Inventory Driver.

GLI's staff is electronically linked directly to RIDGID's Virginia production facility, receiving instantaneous e-forecasting and e-scheduling information over the Internet.

This communication is shared with both GLI's state-of-the-art print production facility and its modern GLDirect fulfillment center – enabling RIDGID to order, assemble and ship to Virginia manual pack materials, which have been produced in a quick, cost-effective "just- in-time" print format. With RIDGID's stringent tolerance standards of five-days early/zero-days late, this high level of coordination is essential in order to avoid closing a production line.