Repeatable Education Solution

Western Suffolk BOCES (http://www.wsboces.org/), a regional educational service agency, provides quality, efficient, shared programs and services to school districts, their students, parents and communities.  Today 37 BOCES in New York serve 721 school districts.  As one of three BOCES on Long Island, Western Suffolk BOCES provides 70 services to school districts more economically and efficiently than one district alone can provide. Western Suffolk BOCES helps school-age children and adults gain the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in the workplace.

The school districts serviced by Western Suffolk BOCES needed a system to track and verify the student’s medicines.  As a policy, the district requires that no student shall be permitted to bring onto the grounds of the school or carry on his/her person any prescription or non-prescription medication.  The parent must deliver the medicine directly to the Health Office in a properly labeled original container.

According to Helen Welcome, technology support for Western Suffolk BOCES, “we wanted a system to print pictures as well as verifying information on labels to insure the correct medicine was given to each student.  To meet this goal, we use ID Flow from Jolly Technology and the TM-C3400."    ID Flow (http://www.jollytech.com/photo-id-card/) offers design tools typically found only in professional graphic design suites and unmatched by any other ID card software.  “The ID label solution is working well at nine of schools”, says Helen. 

After using the solution for some time, Western Suffolk started having issues with the printers consuming too much ink.  According to Tom Strata, Technology Support for Western Suffolk BOCES, “we had a printer at one of our schools that printed only approximately 20 labels before the ink light started flashing.  With printing only 20 labels, we assumed something was wrong with the printer.”

When I first spoke with Tom, I assumed as well that something was wrong with the printer.  However, only the ink light was flashing.  Based on this warning light, I had Tom update the firmware and driver for the printer.  Once updated, Tom found a new cartridge which allowed us to confirm the printer was still working.

According to Tom, this printer was used sparingly, printing only a few labels per week. At another school, the printer was working well, producing a significant number of labels.  In low print volume situations, the TM-C3400 can consume more ink conducting periodic cleaning than actually printing.  For these situations, the TM-C3400 has an economy mode driver setting.

To set up the printer for economy mode, go the Maintenance & Utility tab in the TM-C3400 driver and select Post Printing Verification on the top left of the page:

Select “Next” in the Post Printing Verification dialog box:

And then select Economy Mode for low print volume:

In low print situations, this setting will increase yields and save lots of ink.  If you or your customers are printing more than approximately 50 labels per day, then keep the setting at the default, Anti-Missing Read Mode.  The yield advantage is eliminated at approximately 50 labels.

Western Suffock BOCES developed a great solution to insure their students received the correct medicine.  In the USA, we have 13,809 public school districts and 28,220 private schools.  If you have one of these schools as customers, talk to them about using this type of verification solution for their student’s medicines.   

Guy Mikel
info@colorlabelsolutions.com
855-962-7670
www.colorlabelsolutions.com