By Cassandra Balentine
Today’s workflow tools offer more than streamlined production. They provide analytics that give insight on sales, on-time shipment percentages, cost analysis, ink usage, and more.
“By leveraging data analytics, label providers can gain valuable insights into operational efficiency, helping shop owners make informed decisions to optimize consumables, streamline workflow, and enhance efficiency,” shares Mike Pruitt, senior product manager, Epson America, Inc.
Business intelligence (BI) tools that encompass data collection and analytics are primarily used by label providers to oversee cost analysis. “These tools can be instrumental in assessing the cost of materials and time involved in the label production process,” adds Pruitt.
Analytics on ink usage are useful to a label provider’s return on investment, as it provides the ability to cost out ink expenses per job, resulting in clearer margins for shop owners, adds Pruitt. “In addition, the data augments the process for tracking the inventory, pricing out projects, tracking number of reprints, and managing overall productivity and efficiency. The right workflow software is crucial for ensuring that a print shop operates efficiently and maintains a competitive edge.”
Paul Edwards, VP, digital division, INX International Ink Co., comments that the recording and analysis of this data allows its customers to understand the efficiency of their workflow process and look at ways to further optimize and reduce materials costs to ensure maximum productivity.
Increased Utilization
Many digital label providers are just scratching the surface on the BI data available from their workflow tools.
Assuming the data is accurate, then the operator/business must make use of that data, suggests Edwards. “I believe the data/tools are unlikely to be used optimally. Key data of material efficiency requires analysis and consideration of what changes could be implemented to improve efficiency. The same can be said for the impact of job layout and the ways in which jobs can be set up to reduce machine and material changes. The data can be comprehensive, but how it is used appears to be the harder step.”
“In general, the use of every tool or dashboard is subject to the adoption of new processes. There are always those who lag behind,” states Mike Agness, EVP, Americas, Hybrid Software. “There are also areas or departments in just about any printing plant where management could learn how to make the process faster or run more optimally.”
Pruitt admits that software tools could be better utilized for label providers. However, the high cost of management software often limits its accessibility, and the lack of seamless integration with all label press machines hinders the adoption of these solutions.
According to the LabelTraxx team, the manufacturing floor can provide manufacturers with a wealth of information. “Business leaders are forced daily to make business critical decisions. With the right tools and data, that decision-making process becomes much simpler. BI provides leaders with the performance indicators specific to their business to help them make more informed, data-driven decisions rather than relying on guesswork.”
Agness sees a number of areas where these tools could provide more help. For example, with inventory tracking—the amount of media left on roll and advising someone when to replace it on the press—could be put to greater use.
He says there could also be better control of timing for billing in production. In particular, tracking of time in the prepress world, is probably not captured as well as it could. There are many other key performance indicators that could also help label printers.
Digital Gains
As digital adoption in the label space grow, BI tools are invaluable.
“With jobs going through the facility much faster with much tighter margins, label printers need to be very much in control of what they are doing, and how much it costs,” suggests Agness.
BI tools support the label manufacturer in all value streams, whether that be flexography, offset, or especially digital. “As leaders continue to invest in their business, it’s imperative that you have the data and insights to justify these investments,” comment the LabelTraxx team.
Digital presses are very flexible and fast at processing and printing data, but Pruitt admits that to maximize profitability it’s essential to keep the digital press running efficiently throughout the production day. “BI software is a tool to complement the press by providing real-time insights into the machine’s performance, job scheduling, material usage, and overall productivity. By leveraging the data these BI tools provide, label converters can better optimize the workflow and assess growth opportunities. As digital printing gains acceptability, the importance of BI tools grows to empower shop owners to thrive in the dynamic landscape.”
Edwards feels that as digital gains wider acceptance in label production, the need for BI tools as well as their utilization will become more important. “The complexity of what can be printed in a day could increase ten-fold with shorter runs, on demand, and instant timelines for delivery, the variety of images, and more,” he explains. “The complexity will also increase and the need to address it in the most effective manner will become paramount. However, the inability to efficiently deal with the increased complexity may limit digital acceptance.”
AI for BI
As the evolution of AI continues, BI may benefit.
Agness has seen some movement in AI for BI, mostly in the design and creative side of the business. “Prepress is a smaller piece, and design is a much better place to utilize AI,” he offers.
While LabelTraxx hasn’t seen AI being used specifically for BI yet, however, it envisions a future where all data is captured in BI tools and an AI companion synthesizing that data and helping identify both the positive and negative trends of the business with context.
“While discussions about its potential may be ongoing, significant groundwork remains to be done in regard to streamlining machine data within MIS and interpreting the data,” says Pruitt.
BI Options
Epson offers the Epson Cloud Solution PORT, a remote monitoring platform that provides live production monitoring and collaboration tools to increase automation for Epson SurePress users. Epson Cloud Solution PORT has a clear and simple dashboard, and provides the insight needed to help make critical business decisions. Customers can also export data in JSON, XML, and CSV files to an external MIS system for enhanced efficiency.
HYBRID Software offers print management dashboards and customer dashboards for tasks like proof approvals and file uploads. Utilizing CLOUDFLOW and its PageBuilder and Jobs technology—along with the underlying powerful database—the data connects to web to print and MIS/ERP systems, collecting job data and reporting results back to them. It gives customers the flexibility to have department-specific dashboards with the relevant information for them to perform their tasks.
Using these key features, CLOUDFLOW delivers increased efficiency through high-level automation and organization. It simplifies the collaboration between customers, sales, and prepress operators—and helps label printers assess where process improvements can be made.
INX provides end-to-end solutions that give a customer a much more efficient way to run jobs through a plant, says Edwards. He notes that these tools are workflow specific to optimize jobs for any printer application.
The Label Traxx suite of products offers a Data Warehouse solution built to support the BI needs of your business. It also offers Batched, Automated Planning and Scheduling software, which includes a full suite of reporting tools.
Best Practices
The traditional job ticket is become less significant as digital label jobs come onto the scene, requiring faster turnaround times and complex rules. Agness says it is more important to offer a dashboard that is dynamically updated by systems. “Just like orders that are filtered through the Amazon warehouse system, digital label jobs require their own digital dashboard. They are dynamically changing and keeping each department up-to-date with more thorough data and fewer errors. This includes tasks like inventory updates, job status, and actual time spent on each job, among others.”
Traditionally, LabelTraxx sees manufacturers keeping production log books on the shop floor where each operator is responsible for logging time and materials for each production run. “The key to accurate reporting downstream is ensuring that we have clean data coming into the system. The approach that we recommend is to automate and digitize this process. This would be through the use of encoder wheels at the press to automate this data capture process so the operator can focus on producing good products.”
Make sure your MIS offers an application programing interface that can integrate with your specific press, suggests Pruitt. “This ensures seamless communication and data exchange between the MIS and production equipment. Additionally, when acquiring new machines, prioritize the models that can output data in a format compatible with your MIS API. By standardizing the data collection process across all equipment, a label provider can facilitate more accurate and actionable insights.”
BI for Labels
As print jobs become more complex, the details of each job matter. With modern workflow tools, print providers are able to gain valuable insights that can be leveraged into operational efficiency and the ability to make informed decisions with BI data.
Jun2024, DPS Magazine
