Globally headquartered in the U.S., Trek Bicycle Corporation is a world leader in the manufacture and distribution of bicycles and cycling products. A major competitor in the global bicycle market, the company exports to over 90 different countries, and their bikes are sold through more than 5,000 independent dealers internationally. Trek also sells through Independent Bike Dealers (IBD), which are standalone dealerships that sell Trek’s various product lines, and it has several Trek Factory Stores across the globe.
Trek utilizes a JD Edwards (JDE) business system, which consists of numerous modules for functional areas such as pricing, inventory, and manufacturing. It interfaces with at least ten other software solutions used throughout the Trek enterprise and has over 1,000 users in total, with about 500 concurrent users typically at any one time. Trek has successfully partnered with Loftware for over 20 years to integrate labeling throughout their environment to address customer requirements, streamline processes, and maintain a focus on uptime and continuous operations.
With the company’s continued growth and international presence, it has become progressively more important to rely on the Loftware labeling solution to manage increasing customer demands, manufacturing processes, warehousing and inventory control, and retail challenges.
Labeling represents an important part of Trek’s manufacturing process to identify parts with orders and provide information unique to the manufactured product. The company also generates a wide range of mission-critical labels including work order labels, configuration labels, inventory labels, and shipping labels. Unique labels are used for paint racks, work order bins, manufacturing inventory, on-bike serial number identification, battery charge for electric pedal-assist bikes, and other applications. Any inaccurate information on these labels can disrupt business operations and result in costly downtime and product defects.
Trek deals with a wide range of customer requirements. Many retailers want products ready for sale. They require important information such as pricing and features that are pre-labeled and tagged on bicycles and cycling merchandise prior to shipping. Also, Trek bike models, products, and accessories change seasonally, which means customers require changes to existing labeling. Trek retailers rely on the company to offer flexible labeling to promote store sales and conduct retail events. Additionally, Trek’s global reach means that their manufacturing requirements must frequently change based on where the product is being shipped. The company must meet a host of regional requirements including bike color, material, weight, gearing, and accessories, which vary by product and customer worldwide.
Both warehousing and product distribution require a labeling solution that can easily address challenges including damaged shipments and international regulations. Different functional departments need to label and re-label bike products and accessories for shipping and for re-stock. Trek needed a solution that enabled them to enter information and promptly generate labels in their warehouses that could be applied to bike boxes and used on-site for shipping and receiving purposes.
Trek initiated their popular Applied Pre-Priced Labeling (APPLE) program for retailers to enhance operations and improve sales and customer experience. This free service offers customized labels, which include specific data such as store name, logo, suggested retail value, part numbers, and barcodes. The program, which started with only ten dealers, now consists of over 500 dealers — all with their own unique label. This presented quite a challenge from an IT standpoint, considering that if any global change was required, Trek needed to update all 500 unique labels separately — a time consuming task.
Business users are able to make label changes if a dealer calls and wants to change the logo or change how the barcode looks or some sizing. It’s easy to do. We don’t even need to get involved from an IT standpoint.
Tom Spoke
Global IT Distribution Manager, Trek
Loftware’s Enterprise Labeling Solution allowed Trek to address all of their existing challenges. As a recognized global leader with deep experience in the manufacturing space, Loftware provided Trek with an Enterprise Labeling Solution to meet their evolving customer requirements and their complex labeling needs for manufacturing, warehouse and distribution.
Loftware’s centralized approach allows Trek to integrate labeling processes with their existing JDE system to drive labeling directly from the customer’s transactions, offering both consistency and greater control over what ends up on the label. The integration also extends beyond JDE to retrieve data from other sources. By integrating Loftware labeling with JDE, Trek is able to standardize and automate labeling across the supply chain and throughout all of the manufacturing facilities to keep pace with production. This opportunity to work with existing business processes and vital data sources allows Trek to save time and money by maximizing existing investments, avoiding mislabeling issues and eliminate the need to retrain users.
