Erin Michon, Head of Operations and Client Delivery
Regulatory compliance is not a new concept, but today’s digital tools are opening new doors for companies to use their existing compliance data and processes to improve their own operations as well. Labeling, for example, a common compliance practice in most industries – and Ancor’s foundation – is now used for more than just regulatory requirements, offering users enhanced traceability and operational efficiency.
Ancor’s Roots
Ancor has long provided regulatory compliance labels to the automotive industry, printing packages that include more than a dozen required labels, including certification labels, Monroney labels, VIN labels, emissions labels and more. Early on, without the digital technology we have today to back up our solutions, we faced similar challenges to many in this field: slow manual approvals, lost history of past label versions and reprint waste. In extreme cases, these bottlenecks led to slow recall investigations, reprints due to outdated templates and, in the worst cases, compliance risk.
Our labeling solutions have since evolved into LabelCor, our label management platform built for compliance. With LabelCor, labels are printed at production on approved templates and come complete with real-time data validation and auto-population. It creates regulation-ready labels with digital twin traceability, helping companies save time, reduce errors and avoid manual audits, all from a single platform.
Evolving to the Digital Twin
Through our LabelCor Twin feature, every label has a permanent record that’s easily searchable in our digital platform. Users can see real-time status for every label and look back through each label’s history. LabelCor Twin captures every event in the label lifecycle, from creation, revision and approval through print and deployment. This allows for full revision history and change tracking, audit-ready records for compliance reporting, targeted recall support and on-demand reprints when corrections are needed.
Beyond deployment, LabelCor helps manufacturers track products through their entire useful lifecycles. Think of this tracking capability as a product’s permanent record, giving users instant insight into whether a product has been moved, sold, repaired or recycled.
Reducing Compliance Risk
Not all information on compliance labels is mandated by regulatory bodies. Some provide important, nonregulated information to supply chain experts, port employees, retail workers and others involved as products move through manufacturing, shipping and sales. LabelCor enables these workers to update approved, nonregulated fields while keeping mandated content locked and protected. Changes are still tracked and reflected in the label’s history, maintaining data logs and transparency.
This data and label management system is built and tested for the rigorous compliance needs of the automotive industry, helping mitigate risk when audits or recalls require a rapid response. It first imports vehicle data to create the VIN and validates it against compliance rules and regulations. From there, it automatically populates approved label templates with validated data and sends the label through review and approval workflows. Finally, it prepares labels for printing at Ancor, a plant or a port and retrieves any relevant history for audits or recall campaigns.
Expansion Into New Industries
Our experience in the automotive industry is deep, spanning work with OEMs, EV manufacturers, specialty vehicle manufacturers, powersports companies and commercial vehicle manufacturers. We also work with ports and processing centers.
That experience in regulated industries has led us to innovative solutions for industries with similar needs. BattCor is one example of this, created to track every stage of a battery’s lifecycle, from raw material processing to recycling. This helps manufacturers not only back sustainability claims but comply with evolving regulations and maintain lifecycle visibility as large-scale batteries are increasingly used for electricity storage, vehicles, shipping, data centers and more.
As regulations grow and advance to protect consumers and our use of electronics, medical devices, vehicles, food and so much more, lifecycle visibility is becoming more important in building trust and maintaining compliance. LabelCor is built for just that, with the data and label management technology necessary to make sure any manufacturer is regulation-ready.
ABOUT ANCOR
Smart connectivity, data solutions and digital transformation to help industries evolve and lead.
Ancor is a technology company that builds software systems to digitally represent and manage real-world assets and compliance. Our divisions specialize in label digital twins, real-time asset visibility across warehouses and supply chains, battery management systems and innovation where we design and build new platforms that solve complex customer challenges.
To learn more about Ancor, visit our website at www.weareancor.com.
