DAYTON, OHIO, April 1, 2009 – Plus Technologies announced today that they have implemented an OM Plus based logistics solution for Macy’s Inc. The solution ensures that the pick, pack, ship process in the two warehouses that support Macy’s online business would not be delayed due to printer and print job failures.

This past summer, Macy’s celebrated its 150th anniversary of being the country’s leading retailer. In recent years, Macy’s has experienced 50% year over year growth in their online business. In response to the increased level of business coming from their website, Macy’s opened two warehouses in Portland, TN and Goodyear, AZ. With this increase, coupled with the typical increase in sales during the holiday rush, these two warehouses needed a reliable method to quickly keep up with the print driven order fulfillment activities.

Orders coming into the warehouse typically came as single orders that needed to be processed one at a time. It was essential to the Macy’s customer relations standards that these orders /invoices are quickly and efficiently printed in a reliable method to ensure the correct orders went out to the customers on time. If the warehouse printers failed for any number of reasons-jammed, ran out of paper, low toner, connectivity, or hardware failure-the entire pick, pack, and ship production process halted and all orders were delayed.

Plus Technologies worked with Macy’s and our mutual partner, Lexmark to create a solution that ensures that Macy’s pick, pack, ship operations are not delayed due to print problems. Multiple processes occur to ensure that no failure in the printer, network or related environment keeps an online order from being picked, packed and shipped to the customer on time, every time.

Macy’s warehouse printers now have a “pre-print health check” performed by the Plus Technologies software solution prior to a print job being sent to it. This ensures that Macy’s staff members are aware of a problem with a certain printer before it can delay the printing process.

After a printer is known to be “healthy” the Plus Technologies “assured print confirmation” process ensures that all the invoices are printed correctly and completely. If for some reason a printer does fail to print the invoice, the invoice is failed over to the alternate printer and the user is notified that the invoice had been re-directed to a printer other than the original. In addition to the user being notified of the fail over job, the appropriate service desk staff members are sent an email alerting them that a printer needs to be repaired.

With this solution, Macy’s has dramatically reduced the amount of time it typically took to print their invoices because of the minimized amount of printer downtime. Additionally, Macy’s was able to reduce the amount of staff needed to ensure that the pick, pack ship process was done quickly and efficiently and they also significantly reduced the amount of time the service desk support staff had to dedicate to monitoring and repairing warehouse printers.

About Digital Controls Corporation

The Company’s software division, Plus Technologies, offers years of experience and expertise in all aspects of enterprise print management including, robust print spooling software, enterprise print system architecture and design, print management software tools, and an array of printing related services needed to make your enterprise print operations more functional, reliable, and highly efficient.

The company’s IT Services division, Technology Services Group offers a broad range of IT Services including information security and infrastructure services. Because of our 40 years of experience, we understand the pressures that IT people face every day. We also provide Hardware & Software Sourcing by partnering with leading technology vendors – HP, Dell, Microsoft, Cisco, NetApp, McAfee, Sun and many others.

The company’s managed print services division, Managed Print Group, offers Managed Print Services (MPS) to clients of all industries and sizes. MPS reduces print and output costs, reduces the burden managing enterprise print puts on IT staff via real time alerts, reduces output failures with automatic printer failover and provides a single point of accountability and manageability of printing across the entire enterprise.

Plus Technologies Contact

Michael Visser, SVP and General Manager of Plus Technologies,
444 Alexandersville Road, Miamisburg, OH 45342
Phone: 937-384-0444 ext. 2115, 937-384-0842 fax
Email: [email protected]