In a market of increased regulation and counterfeiting threats, here’s how one world-leading oil and lubricants manufacturer took back control
Introduction
This company is one of the largest of the world's Big Oil companies and retails thousands of oils and lubricants across North and South America, and the Asia-Pacific – with all product labeling and artwork previously managed by disparate processes and systems.
In the face of tightening industry margins, constant regulatory updates and increased threat of counterfeiting, the organisation selected Kallik
and its Veraciti™ platform to introduce automated labeling and artwork management – to quicken time to market, ensure compliance traceability and minimise counterfeiting.
Kallik has been working with one of the world’s largest oil and gas organisations since 2017, with a core focus on the oil and lubricants it retails to consumers across multiple major regions – from North and Latin America through to the Asia-Pacific.
With pressure on traditional oil and gas providers from more renewable market entrants, speed to market is an essential competitive advantage. But with thousands of lubricant products all requiring country-specific labeling and artwork localisation and compliance, speed to market can come at the cost of accuracy and safety.
The company needed to find a way to apply consistency and control of its labeling and artwork on an international scale – as well as drive cost-efficiencies and quicken speed to market in a sector where margins are becoming increasingly tight.
Cutting through product and artwork agency complexity
The main challenge was for the company to overcome the sheer scale and complexity associated with its current oil and lubricant labeling processes. This was previously managed by regional-specific relationships with a large network of third-party artwork agencies. While this naturally came with huge costs, this also brought significant delays when adjusting products to reflect upgrades, rebranding or regulatory changes.
Regulatory changes are also geography-specific, so the company struggled to get organisational oversight on the true extent of impacted products at a country-by-country level. With such a complex network of processes and systems, even understanding which labels and artwork were impacted by a particular regulation was a difficult and time-consuming task.
- Over 1,000 oil and lubricant products to manage and update on a regular basis
- Competitive pressure to quicken speed to market
- Complex network of artwork agencies
- Growing threat from counterfeit oil and lubricants market
Combatting counterfeiting pressures
Alongside this organizational complexity is the constant threat of counterfeiting in the oil and lubricants market. Over the past decade, the number of customs seizures of counterfeit and intellectual property-infringing goods worldwide has consistently exceeded 100,000 per year. These products are typically substandard and do not comply with the quality and safety regulations of their respective industries.
Oils and lubricants are essential products that play a central role in supporting continuous operation of machinery, with common applications across manufacturing, refrigeration, automotive and HVAC. The company had no way of globally enforcing strict labeling and artwork standards to mitigate counterfeiting threats – which mainly relies on ensuring all products contain its proprietary font.
All in one system to enforce control, consistency and compliance
This is why the world-leading oil and lubricants organisation engaged Kallik, seeking its labeling and artwork management (LAM) technology and team of experts. By implementing the Veraciti™ platform, the organisation was able to replace legacy systems and artwork processes - including one system which was approaching end-of-life, and some regions without any dedicated systems for labels and artwork - with a single LAM system to manage products across all geographies.
- Veraciti™
- Kallik technical support
- Rules-based Labeling and Artwork Management (LAM)
Project roll-out builds automation, visibility and traceability into labeling and artwork
As an established supplier and partner, Kallik has closely worked with the customer’s in-house team throughout this project, building on its extensive experience in implementing compliant label and artwork management solutions for highly regulated industries. Kallik experts provided technical support at key stages, including remote implementation support during the global Covid-19 pandemic – working alongside the customer’s team to identify and address any bottlenecks in the process and system region by region.
The project has now been successfully rolled out and Veraciti quickly deployed across Latin America, North America and Asia-Pacific, with the Kallik team tailoring each deployment to allow for regional-specific needs.
- One system implemented across all major regions
- Labeling and artwork automation to quickly update any product in any geography
- Consistency enforced across all labels and artwork to reduce counterfeiting
Quickening speed to market without compromising compliance and safety
With the automation provided by Veraciti, the company is now able to quickly assess the impact of any label or artwork updates or regulatory changes, and action those changes accordingly. Early statistics show that the organisation has been able to quicken time to market by 50%, due to the increased labeling and artwork automation, visibility and control provided by the system.
The platform also ensures strict enforcement of security and printing protocols to minimise counterfeiting. With automated label and artwork solutions ensuring the correct proprietary font is used across all labels, approved labels are then stored in the asset manager and any third-party printer is granted access, eliminating the risk of emailed variants as only the most recent, approved version can be printed.
"This project builds on the strength of the Veraciti platform alongside the deep industry expertise of Kallik in the oil and lubricants sector,” says Beth Peckover, VP Operations at Kallik. “This implementation has delivered greater speed to market, enables anti-counterfeiting and drives compliance across a vast global product portfolio.”