Coleus Packaging (Pty) Ltd is the largest and most dominant crown supplier of metal bottle closures (crowns) for the brewing and bottling industries in Africa, producing over 6 billion crowns a year and supplying to over 10 countries.

With this large scale production Coleus required the ability to track the steel used in manufacturing, and they turned to Afrisoft Africa for a solution.

Afrisfot implemented TransLution software which is used to label all stock which includes steel and all traceable components such as lacquers and compounds used in manufacturing.

Multiple jobs are used to coat the steel sheets as required for the specific stock code being made. As the first job is started, the unique number identifying the steel sheet is scanned and a specific issue is done in SYSPRO. As the sheet is coated and comes off the machine, it is scanned again and the serial number is validated. A job receipt is then done for the sheet and all the compounds used on the job are kit issued. This is repeated for all the coating and painting jobs.

The next stage is pressing bottle tops out of the steel sheets which is also completed as a SYSPRO job. The sheet is scanned before the job is started and issued to the job. The result of the job is thousands of crowns that are produced per sheet – the crowns are packed into boxes and each box is labelled with a pre-printed box label. As the box is checked and sealed, the label is scanned and a job receipt is done per box. When pressing the crowns, a rubber compound is also used which becomes the material on the inside of the crown. As each box is scanned, the rubber compound is kit issued to the job.

Coleus does not utilise lot traceability in SYSPRO. As a result, none of the job issues and receipts required lot or batch numbers in SYSPRO. However all the steel sheets are uniquely identified and these numbers are stored in TransLution. A number of the lacquers and compounds used in production also have supplier batch numbers and where this is the case, TransLution is able to scan and log these numbers to improve traceability.

As a result of utilising TransLution as an automation and tracking system, Coleus was able to turn off their lot traceability which greatly reduced the amount of time taken to run stocktake. This, in turn, allowed production to begin sooner on stock take days.

A further benefit seen at Coleus is higher accuracy in the Job receipts and Issues in SYSRPO, resulting in a better stock picture and greater accuracy as a whole.

About

TransLution™ software was developed to assist manufacturing, warehousing and distribution companies to better manage their business processes and stock handling. The TransLution™ product is particularly focussed on robust integration to customers’ existing ERP, accounting and stock management software for a wide range of transactions. TransLution™ is distributed in Africa by Afrisoft Africa (Pty) Ltd and in Europe by K3 SYSPRO.

Afrisoft Africa (Pty) Ltd was founded in 1998 to serve the specialised needs of agribusiness, manufacturing, warehousing and distribution companies. Afrisoft provides consulting services for business improvement and distributes, implements and supports TransLution™, AGRIS™ and other business improvement software in Africa.