Pulse Software

CASE STUDY #1 ThirtyOne Gifts - Embroidery Design Creation Background Thirty-One Gifts is a direct marketer of person- alized accessories that is currently celebrated its 10th year in operation. Originating as a home-based business in 2003, the company has seen stunning growth and now employs thousands of women across the United States, while recently expanding to Canada. The Problem Thirty-One Gifts had a factory automation solution for the management of order inventory, but they lacked a scalable automation solution for the creation of personalized embroidery. Originally, orders were entered into the sys- tem manually and then used by an operator to create the embroidery file. The files were passed to the machine operators who loaded the designs onto the machine and manually set the thread colors. Since this work was all done manually, there were many points along the production cycle in which errors could be intro- duced. These time consuming and costly errors resulted in a large amount of lost product and thread use, as the product had to be discarded if it was embroidered incorrectly. In some cases, keen operators would spot the errors before sewing, but this halted production while the order awaited a new personalization file. This unreasonably pressured machine operators to scrutinize orders for errors that were avoidable, and reduced their efficiency when managing the machines. An example of a common error that can easily be avoided is embroidery files that are too wide for the sew-able area. Operating this way was impossible with the increased sales volume the company was experiencing, so they connected with Pulse to find a solution. The Solution Thirty-One Gifts needed a scalable automation solution that could integrate into their current production process- es with very little disruption. They implemented a three- part solution that included automatic order processing, personalization generation, and deployment to the em- broidery machine. Using a sophisticated rules engine and a powerful stitch engine, the processed order information was used to automatically generate the personalization. When the machine operator received the product, it included a barcode to scan, which automatically loaded the design onto the embroidery machine with the correct thread needles assigned. The machine operator needed only to hoop the product and load it onto the machine. Benefits The new automation solution effectively eliminated human errors by 100%. Once the client entered the order, it was processed and generated without any further operator intervention and then downloaded to the machine for sewing. The rules engine was instrumental in ensuring the "hands- free" nature of the system, allowing the company to specify rules for embroidery generation on a per product basis. For example: which compression metrics to apply if the personalization was too big for the sewable area. The designs were also checked for blacklisted words such as profanity, which the company would not embroider.

• Cover