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Home: Peckham Apparel Manufacturing

Case Study

Background

Peckham, Inc. is a non-profit vocational rehabilitation organization based in Lansing, Michigan. Their Apparel Manufacturing division provides opportunities for employment and upward mobility for people with disabilities while exceeding customer expectations. Specializing in both prototyping and production of garments, they’ve been designing and manufacturing apparel for the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force for more than 13 years.


Image credit: Capt. Raymond Geoffroy, U.S. Air Force


Challenge

Several years ago, the government notified Peckham’s team that they needed to find a supplier for RFID tags and labels for their garments. Some vendors they researched presented processes that were very complex and technical. Peckham wanted something user-friendly that would simplify the day-to-day work of their team.

Beyond their labeling concerns, their iRAPT (WAWF) and VIM processes were manual and time-consuming, taking at least half a day to compile and submit the necessary information for every shipment of garments they supply to the military.

Objectives

  • Simplify process for end users
  • Efficiently label and ship garments
  • Quickly submit required information to government databases
  • Free up time to devote more attention to other customers

How Odyssey helps

About five years ago, Peckham selected Odyssey for their government fulfillment and labeling solution. Of all the solutions they researched, Odyssey was the most user-friendly and had the most hands-on, responsive support team.

“Odyssey’s system was simpler for our end users to follow,” said Addie Thomas, Apparel Program Administrator at Peckham. “We also appreciated that the Odyssey team came onsite and installed the hardware, trained us how to use everything, and made sure all was working as needed. They’re always willing to spend one-on-one time with us on the phone or onsite.”

Peckham uses three of Odyssey’s aggregators to streamline shipping of military garments by automatically affixing the proper labels to individual items as required. Those individually tagged items are then loaded onto cartons, labeled and married to each garment in the carton. The same process happens as cartons go on pallets, which get labeled with RFID tags to enable quicker processing. This allows garments to be shipped in bulk while also letting workers track them at an individual level once they arrive at their destination.

Compared to Peckham’s previous process, where they had to enter a line item for each garment in both iRAPT and VIM, with Odyssey they can automatically gather this information by reading the RFID tags and then submit it to the required government databases with no manual or duplicate entry.

Results

With the efficiency improvements from Odyssey’s system, processes that used to take a half-day’s work per shipment now only take five minutes. Entire batches of data can be transmitted automatically to iRAPT and VIM, and Peckham only needs to input an invoice number and weight.

As Peckham’s needs have evolved, Odyssey has collaborated with their team to develop new functionality and recommend new approaches. The Peckham team appreciates having a partner in innovation that can share best practices and suggest ways to accomplish their goals.

“Our work with the military is more efficient, opening up more time. This lets us spend quality time across all our customers instead of a disproportionate time on just one customer.” — Addie Thomas, Apparel Program Administrator at Peckham