By Cassandra Balentine
The April issue of Industrial Print magazine includes a feature on the benefits of automation in textile production. While the article looks at multiple facets of implementing workflow solutions that can increase efficiency as well as up production, here we focus on scalability.
It’s All About Scale
When it comes to optimizing an investment, scalability is essential. It comes in many forms, including the ability to add or update licenses, users, devices, and computations in software as well as modularity and upgradability for equipment.
“For any company that intends to grow—most do, scalability is an often-overlooked area as it pertains to automation software,” admits Mike Syverson, textile manager, Durst North America. “Partnering with a company actively developing products, analyzing the market trends and needs, and working with their customers is key to having a product that can scale with a provider’s operation.”
Being setup to grow, and able to do so quickly, is important. “If there’s any lesson to be learned from the past couple of years, it is how important it is to be able to adjust to sudden, dramatic changes in demand. Having a system that allows for quick and easy scaling—or pivoting—can be critical to staying in business during challenging times,” says Beatrice Drury, marketing manager, Zund America, Inc.
“Scalability is crucial, especially for manufacturers where the work is seasonal and you will need to be able to scale up production quickly,” agrees Jeremy Pilcher, textile solutions architect, large format, HP Inc.
The need to expand operations depends on the customer load, but not how small or large a customer is. “Scalability is key to adapt to any need, even those of very specific customers. This approach is not only true for big customers. In fact, scalability guarantees any production to grow smoothly, regardless of its size. Even smaller print shops can benefit from automation, and even small improvements can be a massive step towards their growth,” shares Arnaud Fabre, head of product, Caldera.
“The ability to scale means print businesses can increase capacity to print more jobs per day, directly impacting the bottom line. Without scalability, a print business cannot grow without incurring significant costs,” says Jonathan Rogers, international marketing manager, Onyx Graphics, Inc.
Chris Des Biens, business unit manager – North America, ErgoSoft, feels that scalability is one of the core values that automation delivers. “The idea should not be how scalable the automation software is itself. If you have any concerns about how automation software can scale, then you have a problem. The real value is how automation software enables or facilitates the scalability of the rest of the company.”
He adds that by reducing manual data transmission, gaining efficiencies, and eliminating the reliance on human labor in critical parts of the process, you have the ability to re-deploy your labor resources to other phases of production, and also increase the throughput capacity with your existing hardware. “So really, scalability is the value that automation delivers.”
“Where printers grow into automation with easy-to-use, scalable software solutions that start off by taking care of tasks that waste time and productivity. Repetitive tasks, for example, or error checking. These elements can be automated easily, freeing up staff to focus on other tasks and helping get jobs out more quickly and accurately,” shares Simon Landau, director global strategic partners, PrintFactory.
For hardware, scalability appears in many ways. For example, Kris Berghs, product marketing manager, Summa NV, says it has customers processing small volumes, even though its solutions are capable of handling large textile volumes. “They choose laser cutting technology for the top-quality cuts, the soft sealed edges, or simply because due to the non-contact cutting, some textiles can only be cut with a laser cutter.”
To serve a range of needs, the cutters are configured in a flexible way. “For example, a customer can start with a low power laser, and when volume grows, upgrade to a higher power laser. As a result there is cutting less than a roll a day as well as cutting over a million square meters a year with the cutter. The same chassis, different configuration,” explains Berghs.
Automation in Spades
Scalability is further proof that automation is beneficial in digital print environments. Workflow solutions both tailored to textile production and more generalized offer levels of productivity and efficiency that can help any manufacturer grow their business.
May2022, Industrial Print Magazine