By Cassandra Balentine
Specific to textiles, automation software offers the ability to automate job submission through production; gang and nest jobs; easily set up options like page size, rotation, and step-and-repeat; add registration and finishing marks as well as cut paths; apply automated color management controls; provide secure storage and asset management; enable customer access, on-site production, RIP, collage, and print; secure job delivery; as well as online feedback and live management. Further, API integration allows for added automation and functionally.
The advantages of automation software are many. The April issue of Industrial Print magazine looked into some of the functions and features related to these solutions in a textile printing environment. Here we discover the benefits.
Why Automate
The obvious answer as to why a manufacturer should implement automation is to reap the rewards.
Arnaud Fabre, head of product, Caldera believes that the best margins come from the most streamlined workflows, in which common errors can be automatically fixed or avoided, and where the time spent on details and exceptions requiring valuable skills justifies the price paid by the customer.
Simon Landau, director global strategic partners, PrintFactory, feels that although the initial investment involved in upgrading existing systems and potential short-term disruption to operations can be daunting, if print shops fail to make the transition from manual to an automated approach they will miss out on the opportunity to unlock the key to market growth. “For the majority of printing organizations now is a great time to maximize the window of opportunity that the emerging industrial and functional print segments are already beginning to benefit from,” he adds.
The costs of adding automation software can easily be justified on the labor aspect alone. “Our industry, like most, has been affected by labor shortages and fluctuations. These can wreak havoc on a production facility. By automating as much as possible you chase out those uncertainties. Factor the other advantages mentioned above, automation software becomes a requirement for companies to be successful and competitive long-term,” comments Mike Syverson, textile manager, Durst North America.
Beatrice Drury, marketing manager, Zund America, Inc. adds that automation facilitates on demand and just-in-time manufacturing, which permit reduced inventory, and with it, the potential for sitting on unsellable, outdated merchandise. “State-of-the-art, automated workflow solutions help maximize material yield and allow for greater flexibility in the product line.”
Additionally, Kris Berghs, product marketing manager, Summa NV, says a full digital workflow allows manufacturers to expand the offering, from design to product. A high degree of flexibility is linked to high productivity, in effect mass customization. “It will give a manufacturer a benefit both in cost as well as product offering and lead times.”
Increased efficiency makes a lasting impression on the bottom line. Right now, Chris Des Biens, business unit manager – North America, ErgoSoft, says a digital textile manufacturing shop is a high-technology environment, but it has a number of different technology siloes—none of them are truly integrated. “This means that critical order data generally must be manually transmitted from the order acquisition software to the printing software. So the first major consideration is the elimination of human error, but the second most important consideration is the impact on your production floor. By removing the manual steps of creating jobs, dragging in art work, and selecting the correct length, you are making your process much faster and more efficient as well.”
“There are massive productivity gains to be made even by taking just the first step on the automation journey—ironing out the day-to-day inefficiencies in a workflow,” adds Landau. “When printers think of automation, what often comes to mind is a printing operation with fewer people working on the production floor—a facility filled with robots and automatic data exchange between printers and software for driving business decisions. Minimum intervention on a massive scale. In reality, it’s not an all-or-nothing approach. For many printers, the move towards automation is more of a journey with multiple stages—one where ‘lights-out’ is the end goal, rather than the starting point.”
Jonathan Rogers, international marketing manager, Onyx Graphics, Inc., says the decision to automate really depends upon the specific needs of the business. “While the attraction of automation is aimed at improving business performance, understanding the current production challenges of their business is a good first step. Looking at current processes to understand the workflow bottlenecks, material wastage, and manual production steps, for example, are just some areas to examine to help determine the best solution for their needs. Based on this evaluation, a print business can identify what level of automation is required to improve overall production, whether specific or broader,” he suggests.
Automated workflow technologies can take print businesses to unprecedented levels of profitability. Landau points out that automation offers a number of benefits for boutique shops, such as the ability to work with bigger printing plants and sharing jobs across businesses and devices to meet increasing demand. “Automation makes it easier to outsource jobs while keeping quality consistent and fitting seamlessly alongside other scheduled jobs. The printability will improve as there will be less ink laid down, ink savings will be higher, automation saves an average of at least 20 percent on monthly ink bills and, in many cases, printing speeds increase while still maintaining the same quality.”
Automation Combats Complexity
When implemented properly, automated software solutions bring levels of efficiency as well as productivity to the table. As today’s production processes become increasingly more complex, it only makes sense to onboard software that can help to eliminate room for error.
May2022, Industrial Print Magazine
automation, digital print