Wire & Cable Connector

Tim Ziegler, Product Manager, Automated Assembly Solutions

Brady Corporation

www.bradyid.com/wraptor

Fast Labeling System

Helps Distributor Grow

Wire Harness Business

Chief Enterprises, Inc., Elmhurst, IL, USA, is the NorthAmerican distributor of high-performance Boschparts for the automotive and other industries. As anOEM supplier, the company often gets specific requestsfor custom services to meet customers’ rigorous tech-nical specifications.

One of the firm’s frequent customer requests is for wireharness assembly, and so about two years ago ChiefEnterprises began offering this value-added service.Since then, wire harness assembly has become a fast-growing part of Chief Enterprises’ business. An im-portant part of wire harness assembly is wire label-ing, and the Chief Enterprises team tried a variety ofmethods to determine the fastest, most professionallooking, longest-lasting and most cost-effectivemethod for this relatively new aspect of its business.

The original process for wire harness assembly atChief Enterprises involved flag-type labels. This wasa time-consuming manual process that required pre-printing of labels. Even with careful assembly, theharnesses would not look clean and professional if allof the wrap-around “flags” didn‘t line up.

Because Chief Enterprises’ customers require a highdegree of precision, John Herzog, Vice President En-gineering and Operations, began looking for betterwire labeling options.

Evaluating the OptionsHerzog found a hot stamp process that would printdirectly on the cable, but this was designed more forlarge-volume, in-line operations, and not the smallerquantity custom assembly services that Chief Enter-prises provides.

Another vendor offered a self-laminating label, but itstill required pre-printing and some handwork, andthe machine would often jam or misfeed, further slow-ing the labeling process.

Another company offered to build a custom labelingmachine, but it was more than twice the cost of otheroptions and used flag-type labels—already proven to

be a less desirable solution.

After these initial experiments, Herzog contacted arepresentative of Brady Corporation, Milwaukee, WI,USA, who delivered a Beta unit of the Brady Wraptor™wire ID printer applicator for the Chief Enterprisesteam to test. Even the Beta Wraptor unit was far su-perior to the other options available at the time, witha more efficient print and wrap process that allowedthe company to skip the step of pre-printing labels.The six-second cycle time of the original Wraptor unitwas about five times faster than Chief’s previoushand-wrap process, making their wire harness as-sembly service more efficient for customers and moreprofitable for Chief Enterprises.

Significant Productivity ImprovementsThe Wraptor unit continues to drastically improvethe productivity of the wire harness assembly pro-cess at Chief Enterprises. The company purchased itsfirst Wraptor unit in February of 2004, and the sec-ond unit in the winter of 2005. Each unit is dedicatedto a single line and runs for one eight-hour shift perday, adding up to 200,000 to 300,000 labels per year.And based on the new Wraptor unit’s faster 4.5 sec-

Examples of cable assemblies labeled at Chief Enterprises;Waraptor™ print-and-apply label (top) and traditional

flag-type label (bottom).

Brady Wraptor™ wire IDprinter applicator.

Reprinted from January 2006 Wire & Cable Technology International

Company Profiles...

Brady Corporation is an international manufacturer

and marketer of identification and materials solu-

tions including labels, signs, printing systems, soft-

ware and label-application and data-collection sys-

tems for electronics, telecommunications, manu-

facturing, electrical and a variety of other markets.

Chief Enterprises, Inc., is a distributor of high-per-

formance parts, including relays, sockets, automo-

tive electrical system accessories, motors, pumps,

and actuators, in addition to customized wire har-

ness assembly. They are the master international

distributor of Bosch electromechanical relays to

North America. www.chiefent.com

ond cycle rate (as compared to the six-second cycle ofthe Beta Wraptor unit,) Herzog predicts that ChiefEnterprises will label 400,000 to 600,000 wires in thenext year.

In doing his research into labeling options, Herzogalso found that the Brady Wraptor offered many ad-vantages for his operation. The programs in the BradyWraptor are beneficial because line operators can sim-ply call up the label program they need and be readyto go with minimal setup time. The Wraptor print-and-apply process means that the office staff doesn’thave to pre-print labels, saving on labor time andavoiding the cost of wasted labels.

Easy Integration & Label QualityIt is important for Chief Enterprises that any labelingsystem needs to work well with the company’s exist-ing processes. The Brady Wraptor is a self-containedunit, and therefore it fits on a cart and can be movedfrom line to line if needed. It is easy to use, easily loadedand virtually error-proof, because the Wraptor label-cartridge features a chip that knows if the label for-mat and the labels match.

The choice of labels was another important consider-ation for Herzog. Brady high-quality labels offer theclean, professional look that Chief Enterprises’ cus-tomers expect. “Self-laminating labels are the bestchoice for our applications,” Herzog said. “And Bradyis number one in label quality.”

While Brady labels cost more, the staff at Chief Enter-prises has found that the Wraptor machine helps inavoiding wasted labels, and therefore provides anoverall cost/quality advantage. Brady also offers abroad selection of label widths that accommodatemore information, with a bar coding feature that ChiefEnterprises needs.

Potential for Business GrowthChief Enterprises is including the Wraptor in its plansfor company growth. Because the Wraptor isnetworkable, Herzog and his team see a potential ad-vantage when Chief Enterprises moves to a new, largerlocation. To accommodate its growing wire harnessassembly business, the company is looking into thecapability of linking the Wraptor to the network sothat it can download and print labels and makechanges (like date code changes) directly from the net-work, in order to save even more time in the produc-tion process.

One of the biggest advantages that Herzog found instarting to use the Wraptor was working with theexperts at Brady. According to Herzog, “Tim Zieglerand his team were willing to work with us on ourneeds. They were good partners.”

ConclusionSince using the Brady Wraptor, Chief Enterprises hasbecome more efficient at wire harness assembly, low-ering its cycle time and labor costs. This leaves thecompany in a position to more aggressively pursuebusiness through this value-added assembly service.

Herzog estimates that the company’s first Wraptorunit paid for itself in less than six months, and withthe faster cycle times of their newer unit, the secondWraptor is sure to pay for itself just as quickly.

The success of this portion of Chief Enterprises’ busi-ness has Herzog and his team looking for other appli-cations for Brady Wraptor technology, where theycan continue to offer customers personal value-addedservice and build the profitability of their business.

To receive additional technical specifications on theWraptor wire ID printer applicator, contact Brady at+1 800 311 0775 .

Print-and-apply labels being put on cables atChief Enterprises, Inc.

An ISO-9001 REGISTERED FIRM ©2006 BRADY CorporationPrinted in U.S.A. All rights reserved. Specifications subject to change without notice.02-06-MI-3K