Intelligent Software is the key to profitability

For many Printers, the manufacturing process has virtually remained the same and they still use the same equipment they purchased or was built in the 90’s – presses, binders, stitchers, gluers, folders, laminators, cutters or embossers.

During the last 30 years, some printers have chosen to modernize and complement their existing equipment with new or digital presses, including modern finishing or bindery equipment.

As much as some things have stayed the same, without a doubt the last 20 years has seen a dramatic shift in both the typical order composition and volume, as well as the tools and way prepress prepares graphics for imaging.

Both lending and printing companies are very familiar with buying expensive hardware that has 30 or 40 years of use and require as many years of payments, but their comfort level disappears when having to buy specialized or customized software to support their job processing, including having to pay annual maintenance or on-going customization fees for that software.

Printers typically fail to recognize it is the software that makes the biggest difference to their productivity and profitability. Every printers dream is that every piece of equipment is running 100% of the time, but to accomplish that, it requires great software to feed and keep that manufacturing engine running.

Aside from needing incredible sales to support this concept, mistakes happen, and every mistake is both costly and extremely disruptive to scheduling and delivery.

What do most printers learn from their mistakes? How do they try to eliminate them from happening again? There are so many landmines along the way from order receipt to shipping perfect jobs…

Usually a new QC step, a new SOP, a new memo is issued to try to stop them reoccurring. Most of these adjustments to any job’s workflow are implemented through people - checking, spotting, or visually verifying something to try to catch the next one.

Let’s focus on the starting point - ensuring that every plate is produced correctly. Correctly imaged, positioned, orientated, sized and spaced, including all marks, bleeds, bars, curves and all the business requirements that go into preparing a job to be printed and manufactured.

Without perfect plates, the downstream processes will be compromised, and some errors might not be discovered until it is folded, cut, glued, or assembled. The further along it gets, the more expensive the mistake.

What is required to getting plates right? It takes 5 things

• Customer provides right information about the job.
• Customer provides usable graphics that match the order.
• An order entry process that translates the order requirements into MIS system.
• Prepress correctly interprets the order entry information when preparing a set of plates.
• An order entry process that must incorporate sage knowledge of SOP’s, business rules, logic and experience to enter a job whose information will be interpreted by manufacturing personnel.

I intentionally used the word “interpret” for steps 4 and 5, as most MIS systems cannot properly describe each and every job’s requirements.  Order entry is very complicated, the CSR may rather than assume provide incomplete information, or many things tend to get buried in notes, which can be easily overlooked, mis-interpreted, or may conflict with other data entered.

This is where printers have not embraced the power of software. They should not count on humans to verify, validate, and check requirements. We are now operating in a digital world. Printers should instead count on the software deployed to contain all the programmed knowledge of the requirements.

Creating layouts and plates is the point that all the information converges. Order entry information is compared and contrasted with the graphic information, and the layouts that prepress generates needs to be digitally validated using the detailed business rules to check and verify all known conditions have been adhered to. Order specifications, graphic characteristics, and layout mechanical details are all available and subject to the verification logic.

Future post mortem changes should not be just a new SOP or meme, but be programmed into the logic of the validation software, modifying its rules or checks, using enhanced logic.

Today’s digital workflows, systems and tools provide every printer this capability. Each printer must connect the dots for themselves. Regardless if you specialize in packaging, flexo, commercial, finishing, binding, digital or offset, your needs are unique, but the process is fundamentally the same to get orders converted to printed material.