Chr. Hansen selects NiceLabel technology to support mission-critical production

Chr. Hansen develops and produces cultures, enzymes, probiotics, and natural colors for the food, confectionary, beverages, dietary supplements, and animal feed industries.

Founded in 1874, it has more than 3,000 employees in more than 30 countries, including 400 employees in the U.S. office in Milwaukee. 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, allows Chr. Hansen to reduce costs and consolidate their label templates, remove inconsistencies, and improve workflow and quality assurance when designing and printing its labels.

Jens Berth, Senior IT Project Manager at Chr. Hansen says: “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).

“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.

Berth adds: “Having a web printing application that lets us printthe 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. 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.”

Lee Patty, VP and GM NiceLabel Americas, NiceLabel says: “Legacy labeling technology systems at Chr. Hansen were leading to high costs and a cumbersome process. 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.”