panther_industries

systems. Over the years, the company has also

created many special solutions for clients that have

since become standard in the industry. Examples of

a special system might be one that puts flag labels

on thin medical device cables, and another that

is tailored to wrap and label pharmaceutical bot-

tles moving swiftly on a conveyor belt. Indeed, it’s

been Panther’s continual innovations in engineered

labeling solutions that have differentiated it from its

competitors.

More recently, the company’s technological

expertise has resulted in some rapid expansion. Dow

says that over the last couple of years, Panther In-

dustries has moved resolutely into the logistics of the

e-commerce sector and is now a supplier to some of

the biggest online retailers, including many Fortune

100 companies.

“Our systems are really tailored to do the e-com-

merce business, labeling a lot of different-sized and

different-shaped product

–

on the fly

–

in a way that

doesn’t need any human intervention or interaction

with the product as it goes by,” Dow explains.

Another aspect of Panther Industries that sepa-

rates it from the competition is the capability the

company to communicate with its own machinery

and for the machines, themselves, to interact with

one another up and down the supply chain.

“We’ve always allowed, and had the ability to

give, all kinds of information based on every single

status that happens to our machines,” says Dow.

“Since about 2007-08, with the launch of the Panther

P8, we’ve had all this ability over the internet, and

Ethernet/IP, and Modbus/TCP, and TCP/IP, and other

networks that we communicate over, to give our

customers all this information. Meanwhile, we’re get-

ting to a point where we’re going to be offering the

next generation of communication, increasing our

speeds, and creating even more functionality in our

system to apply more labels in less time, and allowing

a single line to do more throughput.”

In addition, because Panther systems have error

reporting and recommended solutions either on a