Melville, NY – Lakeside Book Company (“Lakeside”), the largest book producer in the United States, has transformed its digital manufacturing operations with the SpencerMetrics CONNECT® Industry 4.0 platform. The solution provides real-time data collection, monitoring, reporting, and integrated systems connectivity at Lakeside’s multiple production facilities.

With the exponential growth in recent years of books-on-demand, Lakeside’s production team has been challenged to balance increased order volume with that of available capacity and resources. Equipment utilization, labor shortages, and productivity have been key components impacting all print operations. In light of the current social and business climate, CONNECT has proven to be an indispensable partner solution for managing operations. Performance metrics for equipment, labor, jobs, material usage, waste, and much more – all provided by the SpencerMetrics solution – have been critical in enabling Lakeside to make data-driven decisions and come out ahead of the demand curve.

Lakeside’s manufacturing team is able to drive unique continuous improvement initiatives across both their digital printing presses and their conventional finishing and binding equipment with real-time visibility into Key Performance Indicators (KPI), such as Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), Utilization, and Operator Productivity. In addition, Lakeside’s IT team has utilized CONNECT’s API to integrate with their MIS/ERP system allowing for automated and accurate job-level data capture. CONNECT’s real-time production dashboards, alerts, and notifications enable the Lakeside team to respond quickly and on point to critical issues, thus avoiding costly production delays.

Peter Shima, Vice President of Manufacturing at Lakeside Book Company said, “SpencerMetrics has been a great partner as we’ve collaborated on various improvements to the CONNECT Industry 4.0 platform. Our operation has improved as a result of the real time data visibility and the summary reporting capabilities. Our operators have embraced the feedback and made conscious changes that have positively impacted our results.”

“The partnership with the Lakeside team has been mutually beneficial. We have been able to implement our solution in an Enterprise-wide platform and add value to multiple functions from production to IT and maintenance. We are excited to be an integral part of Lakeside’s transformation initiative.” said David Spencer, CEO at SpencerMetrics.