Operational Excellence | 2024 Innovator of the Year: Window Nation

The Innovator of the Year award recognizes a team implementing a mobile or automated data capture solution that has greatly impacted the business’s efficiency, accuracy, and connectivity. The winning team has demonstrated creativity, innovation, and a dedication to continuous improvement. 

We are thrilled to recognize the work of Window Nation as our 2024 Innovator of the Year, an organization that’s demonstrated an exemplary commitment to being more efficient, accurate, and connected.

Window Nation, a Barcoding customer, is a replacement window and door home remodeling company currently expanding throughout the country. The Company maintains a vast inventory of goods across several locations and is committed to providing exceptional customer service and quality installations. 

Window Nation is continually undergoing market expansions, and its processes need to be taken out of their manual procedures and into modern operations. With their dedication to modernization and process refinement, their partnership with Barcoding and Zebra Technologies was able to lift them out of traditional pen-and-paper methods and into automation which not only increased their productivity exponentially but also allowed a tremendous surge in inventory visibility. 

By deploying TC53 mobile computers (with SE55 advanced scan engine), Window Nation can now easily document inventory, share proof of condition, and calculate dimensions. With strengthened on-the-job productivity, they managed to heavily scale back delays, increase communication between sites, and still use their current ERP. Barcoding also implemented IntelliTrack to advance their consumables tracking and further reduce downtime. 

We are honored to collaborate on such a powerful project with Window Nation. Working with their team has shown us their drive for both innovation and productivity. Their commitment to their employees and customers during this journey of growth is what makes them a true Innovator of the Year.” 
—Cody Peters, MBA, Account Manager, Barcoding Inc. 

Throughout their journey of growth, we were impressed by Window Nation’s commitment to their employee experience, willingness to innovate, and outstanding customer service. With our partnership, we achieved operational excellence together and now cannot wait to see where the future will take them. 

As Window Nation continues to expand across the country, we were looking for a solution where we could have timely and accurate processing of inventory data.  We were starting from the ground up by outlining new processes and labeling 28 different warehouses.  In 2024, we will be in the process of the system conversion.  For the markets that have gone live with the inventory tracking solution, Window Nation has seen the improvements desired.  Where we had averages of 10% inaccuracies between monthly tracking to inventory counts, we have seen improvements meeting a 1.5% target for our variances.  
We look forward to the next phase of our project, where we will be able to use this data to allow for centralized purchasing and allow our team to negotiate better pricing when we understand true volume metrics.” 
—Eric Ruhl, VP-Finance & Accounting, Window Nation 

We want to congratulate Window Nation on winning Innovator of the Year. By being an exemplary company striving to innovate and making impactful improvements to your processes, you inspire others seeking the same success. We are grateful to partner with you. 

The Innovator of the Year Award was presented at Barcoding’s headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland!