How a more efficient path from file to press can unlock greater productivity
Speed. Uptime. Automation. There is a point in almost every conversation about digital print productivity when attention turns to the press. Each measure is critical, which is why printers looking for their next gains in productivity should also pay closer attention to what happens before a job ever reaches the engine.
The distinction is becoming more important as digital printing shifts toward shorter runs and a higher volume of individual jobs. A press may have the capacity to produce 100 or 200 jobs a day, but keeping it fed requires moving each job through a series of decisions involving files, media, page counts, imposition, routing and other production requirements.
As job counts rise, the challenge becomes less about press speed and more about how efficiently work can reach the press.
In many pressrooms, the next productivity constraint may have little to do with press speed. The bigger challenge is reducing the human intervention required to keep work moving into production.
The shift puts more attention on what happens before the press. How quickly a press can produce a job still matters, but so does how efficiently an operation can prepare the work, make the necessary production decisions and get it to the press ready to run.
Across the industry, there is a shared push to make production easier and more predictable.
The Bottleneck Before the Press
Every manual touch along the way takes time. Someone has to receive the file, check it, determine how it should be imposed, identify the right media, decide where the job should run and make sure the information follows the job into production. None of those decisions is particularly burdensome on its own.
Multiply this across dozens or hundreds of jobs and the workflow surrounding the press can begin consuming a surprising amount of capacity.
This is where automation can make a difference. Many of the decisions your team makes throughout the day can be built into the production process, using rules based on job characteristics such as quantity, media, page count, job type or job colors.
Once those rules are established, routine work can move through preparation and routing without requiring someone to make the same decision job after job.
The potential impact becomes clearer at volume. If a printer processing 100 jobs per day requires an operator, CSR or prepress employee to touch each job five times, the operation is managing 500 touches every day. Eliminating only two touches per job removes 200 manual actions from the workflow. At three minutes per touch. This translates into approximately 10 hours of labor capacity that can be redirected each day.
The point is not necessarily to operate with fewer people. For printers already trying to manage more short-run work with existing teams, the greater opportunity is using skilled employees where their knowledge has more value.
Instead of spending time moving routine jobs through production, operators and prepress employees can focus their attention on exceptions, more complex work and the issues that genuinely require their expertise. Automation handles the repeatable decisions while your team remains involved where experience and judgment matter most.
The benefits transcend labor. Catching problems early in the process helps reduce wasted substrate, toner and finishing time while faster job preparation keeps equipment producing. Reducing manual handoffs also reduces the opportunities for mistakes to enter the process. For high volumes of short-run work, those efficiencies can significantly improve the economics of each job and guarantee repeatable results.
Finding Capacity You Already Have
There also is a capacity argument. When volume increases, the instinct may be to start thinking about another press. But if existing equipment is routinely waiting for files, job tickets, imposition or other production decisions, there may be more capacity available than the operation realizes.
Reducing that idle time can help printers move more work through the equipment they already own and potentially delay the need for another capital investment.
For multi-press environments, the opportunity becomes larger still because workflow automation changes the conversation from the performance of an individual engine to the movement of work across the entire production floor. Jobs can be evaluated and routed according to the needs of the work and the capabilities of the equipment rather than depending on someone to make each decision manually.
Ultimately, the workflow advantage comes down to moving more work through production without adding more manual intervention. Fewer touches can reduce waiting and errors while helping printers make better use of their equipment, create more capacity and protect margins.
Putting Automation to Work
It also is the thinking behind Fujifilm’s Revoria XMF PressReady workflow automation solution. PressReady is designed to automate many of the repetitive preparation and routing decisions that happen before production, including preflight, imposition, ganging, sorting and routing.
Working alongside Revoria Flow, which manages RIP processing, color, print settings and other press-specific controls, it creates a more automated path from incoming job to production. Revoria Flow also provides tools for previewing the prepared job and verifying any specialty toner application.
For Fujifilm, the opportunity is not simply to automate another step in the process. It is to help printers get more value from the people and equipment they already have by reducing the friction that keeps work from moving.
Because the press still has to perform. The real workflow advantage is making sure it has something to print.
For more information, visit https://print-us.fujifilm.com/products/print-workflow-software/xmf-pressready-workflow/
