Kallik and Zebra Technologies help medical device and life sciences manufacturers increase efficiency and visibility with Internet of Things solutions

Streamlined, traceable printing solutions - including Zatar IoT platform - help remove cost, complexity and regulatory risk

Kallik, the Label and Artwork Management company, has announced a strategic technology partnership with Zebra Technologies Corporation, a global leader in products and services that provide real-time visibility into organisations' assets, people and transactions. The resulting solutions extend the reach and benefits of Kallik's flagship Label and Artwork Management (LAM) system to the factory-floor printer.

Manufacturers commonly have multiple standalone PCs, databases and printers for packaging and labelling output, leading to inefficiency and duplication. Once label artwork is approved, it is often received by the manufacturing facility as a PDF, only to be recreated in another software system.

With the combined solutions introduced in January 2015, Kallik harnesses Zebra's Zatar Internet of Things (IoT) enablement platform, allowing remote printer applications to be integrated with other software systems. Kallik uses this to extend the controls and transparency of its AMS360 LAM solution down to the label printer level – helping remove cost, complexity and regulatory risk for producers of medical devices and other life sciences manufacturers.

Kallik AMS360 is a cloud-based label and artwork management system which allows all of the constituent visual parts of a product's packaging, labelling and user literature to be managed intelligently and with high levels of automation from a single, central place.

The AMS360 system improves a manufacturer's efficiency, speed to market and compliance. It has particular appeal in heavily regulated industries in which ensuring the use of correct, up-to-date wording, logos and symbols in each target country is paramount.

Zatar is an IoT application enablement platform that helps manage entire device networks and simplifies the creation of applications. Zatar is the ideal software platform to build IoT and Machine to Machine (M2M) applications.

Recently named a leading player in Gartner's Market Guide for LAM Software Vendors, Kallik integrates the Zatar platform with its AMS360 LAM software to drive print commands and extend the traceability of content-handling through to the final output.

Neil Gleghorn, founder and CEO, Kallik, commented: "Thanks to our partnership with Zebra, our customers can reduce the costs of maintaining multiple printers by connecting to any single printer across their organisations. From one system, everything can be controlled so there is a single version of the truth, and an end-to-end audit trail of who did what, when, and where. Once a master label has been approved, it can be printed directly from our system. This capability is completely unique to Kallik."

Philip Gerskovich, senior vice president, New Growth Platforms, Zebra Technologies, said: "We are excited that Kallik, a long-time Zebra partner, has selected the Zatar enterprise IoT platform to enhance the experience for its customers and create a new solution that addresses tasks that are historically time consuming and expensive."