Not Dave Word

These days everybody gets so wrapped up in day-to-day events, we often forget to think about the organizations in our community that need our help – be it our time, talent, or treasure. The importance of community involvement is growing each year as the needs for education funding, housing, feeding the hungry, and supporting young people grow more urgent as the economy remains sluggish.

For a number of years, Lexicon has supported the A.R Barksdale Boys & Girls Club, a part of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta (BGCMA), to assist its fundraising work for programs that support at-risk youth in our area.  Their 27^th annual “Super Saturday Night” event was held in Conyers, GA at the Georgia International Horse Park in May, to raise money for their work.  This year’s event was ‘casino night’-themed complete with gaming tables, professional dealers and even an Elvis impersonator to serenade guests with throughout the evening. The evening was a success, netting over $52,000 for the club.  Lexicon Leadership Team member, Dave Word, our Director of Technical Services, represented us and accepted an award from the Boys and Girls Club recognizing our support.  And NO, Dave was not the “Elvis-guy” (see pictures for confirmation).

Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta’s mission is to provide a quality developmental program that empowers metro-Atlanta youth, especially those from disadvantaged circumstances, to become productive adults. Through 26 Clubs in 11 metro counties, trained, professional staff serves more than 5,000 disadvantaged youth (ages 6-18) daily through programs that foster academic success, healthy lifestyles, and character and leadership development.  For more on the Boys & Girls Club, visit their Atlanta site here

Everyone knows that funding for education is under pressure in our nation, especially so during the last couple of economically weak years.  To try to do our part to support teachers and students in our local community, since 2003 Lexicon has helped to support and fund a “teaching grant” program from the Rockdale Foundation for Excellence in Education, designed to enrich the classroom experience for students in our local Rockdale County Public School system.

The Foundation is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization, governed and staffed by an all volunteer board that is committed to attracting funds and resources for education programs and projects not covered in the school system’s regular budget; every dime they raise each year goes directly to support classroom teaching or boosts the organizations’ endowment.  Their primary program provides “mini-grants” (up to a maximum of $500 each) to teachers to purchase materials for innovative learning activities in the classroom.  The competitive grant application process encourages teachers to discover new and exciting ways to challenge students, and provides community members (like Lexicon and other companies) an opportunity to lend support.

Lexicon’s Rose Collins, our Chief Administrative Officer has held positions on the volunteer board for many years (including two stints as President; she’s currently the treasurer).  Other Lexicon team members including Scott Robinson, Director of Operations, and Darla Mann, one of our Business Development team members have spent many volunteer hours scoring grant applications, to support the mini-grant project. This year, thanks to great community support, The Foundation for Excellence in Education was able to award 41 mini-grants totaling $18,000.  We are very proud and supportive of our community and its support of our local schools – and thanks to Lexicon Team Members for their leadership in this important effort!

 Back in February, Lexicon completed a “Gap Analysis” phase where an initial assessment was performed to determine where our company is currently and what must be done to get a quality system in place. The Lexicon team has been busy documenting all the relevant processes and procedures.

This summer will be dedicated to auditing all the departments to ensure that processes are being followed, and that any non-conformances are documented and corrective actions are implemented.  All of the members of the Lexicon team are being educated and continuously tested on the “quality system” and results and business objectives are measured monthly. Meeting the growing demands of our customers need for improved quality and better service is crucial to the success of the business; therefore we are achieving this registration to show our commitment to quality and to the continuous improvement of our business.  It’s an exciting time, and in so many ways the management team has already seen the positive impact the ISO 9001 certification process is having on Lexicon and most importantly, our customers.

One priority for me will be to keep our customers informed on Repair Engine®, our online Repair Management System by communicating improvements, new features and benefits (there are lots of them!), and maybe a series of tips to better utilize this program. I will also be managing the content of LexiconTech.com, and specifically have an initial project to oversee a new look and feel to our current website to better communicate how a relationship with Lexicon can benefit Enterprise and Service customers.

My past professional experience has been in marketing communications, though for the last several years I've been away from the corporate world to focus on my family. Previously, I held marcomms positions at Snapper Inc., a manufacturer of commercial and residential lawn mowers, and at Acuity Brands, a provider of lighting fixtures and services. In both positions I worked as the liaison between the company and it's employees and the internal and external advertising agencies. I managed the web content and created copy for external product communications items including brochures, sales sheets, mailings, trade show giveaways, banners, hang tags and other POP materials. Coming from marketing products in those roles, to Lexicon which is a service provider is definitely a change for me, but in the end it is all the same concept; communicate the benefits Lexicon can provide to our target customers and tell the story over and over in lots of different, tangible, and compelling ways. Hopefully, you'll notice the difference in the frequency and quality of our marketing communications soon.

After all, it isn't enough just to do a good job - it helps if the market also knows about the good job we're doing.

In the meantime we'll share this:  in February we began the physical expansion of our Conyers, GA service center.  Two primary catalysts for the expansion:  1) repair volume -- we had simply outgrown our space and had to have more depot floor capacity, office/admin/business development space, and our warehouse was way too small; 2) we wanted to implement a newly-designed repair strategy (on high volume lines of technology equipment we repair on a depot-basis) to improve scale economies, repair throughput, lower our per unit repair costs, and improve our already high quality.  To make that a reality we needed the physical room to utilize new processes our team has designed to incorporate multiple strategies for automated bulk or "power-repair" actions in the "pre-", "in-", and "post-" repair phases.  It's really exciting stuff and we believe our customers are going to love what Lexicon can provide in terms of repair & maintenance quality and value (and volume) in 2010.

We'll post some pictures over the next few weeks so you can see some of the Lexicon innovations in process and get a look at our expanded facility.  The great news for our customers is that we continue to make the critical capital investments in the physical assets (our expansion, etc.) and the digital, information-based assets (RepairEngine® and LexiconTech.com which you'll hear some exciting new stuff about soon) to ensure that you get the most from your IT hardware investment -- whether we're talking mobile barcode handhelds from Symbol Motorola or Intermec, printers from Zebra or O'Neil -- or POS systems and scanners from NCR, printers from Hewlett-Packard or Printronix, etc., etc. 

Nobody is going to make Technology Equipment Repair & Maintenance, or managing same, easier or better than Lexicon -- and we're going to keep proving it in 2010.

Unfortunately, we got caught up in the problem as well, and RepairEngine(r) was down for about 90 minutes.   Lexicon's tech team has since added a couple of layers of DNS redundancy to prevent a reoccurrence of this problem.  Thanks to our users for your patience this morning.

We apologize for the inconvenience that this may have caused. The good news is that our development/tech teams have taken the opportunity to build more durability and robustness into the web "infrastructure" that supports RepairEngine(r).

In the meantime, please feel free to contact Lexicon by phone at 800.678.1744 for any information or immediate assistance that you may need.

The RepairEngine "spring-fling" of new feature rollouts rolls on later today with our new splash page "Dashboard", which we guarantee that you'll like and find useful.  There is an 'Alerts' mini-grid that identifies any and all items that may need your immediate attention, as well as three other sections to help you monitor your overall Repair Mangement status, recent trends, and user/location activity at a glance.  RepairEngine's dashboard mini-grids are linked directly for fast access to the full and complete information you need to successfully manage your team's enterprise mobility equipment and maintenance.

All RepairEngine users should expect to see the new features we've been beta testing by mid to late next week, when we plan to roll all of the enhancements out to our entire user community. 

Maybe.  We frequently get asked by clients who use our barcode scanners and portable data terminals repair center to support their (Symbol scanner or Intermec scanner and printer devices, typically) about whether we can also repair their barcode label printers (usually Zebra printer or Intermec printer; sometimes Datamax printer or Sato printer).  The short answer is usually "yes", but frankly these label-printing sub-systems often make for more complicated service strategy decisions than many users realize . . . so this multi-part post will offer some keys to consider as an OPS Team creates a support plan.

Number One and don't laugh:  How much do my label printers weigh?  Two common sense rules of thumb apply here, and though Zebra label printers aren't sold by the pound, the more expensive the Zebra, the heavier Zebra. And the real kicker, the heavier the Zebra (or Intermec or Sato) the trickier and more trouble it is to safely ship.

Take special precautions when you're shipping heavy (70 lbs plus or minus and up), wide-web (more than 6 inches wide) thermal/thermal transfer label printers; unless you ship in the original container with all the original packing, then box the printer, wrap it/pad it well in in about three layers of bubble-wrap (no polystyerene peanuts, please!), strap it to a pallet, and ship it for repair service via an LTL carrier.  Specify that it be returned to you in the same manner.  If you ignore this guideline and ship via a parcel carrier ground service, be prepared for carrier damage due to the weight/dimensions/design of the printer in combination with inadequate packaging.

The bottom line with these wide-web workhorse printers like the Zebra 220xiIII, or a similar model from Intermec, Datamax, or Sato is you should consider an onsite printer maintenance contract just because they don't travel well. We're not minimizing other important issues like the nature of the application (i.e., can I afford to be without the printer for hours, days or more, etc.), the availability of print capacity on other printers or lines in your shop, or the presence of on-site spares - but from our experience and that of many Lexicon customers, don't miss this simple truth -- it will save you heartache.

Note that our general recommendation in this case was for an onsite maintenance contract for heavy, wide-web thermal label printers.  Change any of these variables and we've got other, and we believe better ideas to consider for Zebra printer or Intermec printer maintenance and repair support.

Check Part Two of this post for some of those thoughts next week.