Packaging Software Leading Production Success

With so much focus on the equipment, software can sometimes get a smaller share of the limelight than its more tangible hardware counterparts. It’s important to remember that behind every great piece of equipment is great software. This article looks at the softer side of packaging production.

Workflow and Productivity

When it comes to productivity within package printing and converting, all the hardware bells and whistles in the world won’t save you from bottlenecks if your workflow is not optimized. Accurate, up-to-the-minute data from the factory floor offers comprehensive visibility, allowing printers and converters to assess issues in real time.

“You cannot manage what you can’t see,” Aleks Zlatic, EFI’s GM for packaging software, says. “If you don’t see what is actually happening in your factory, you really cannot fix it, and if you don’t have software to do that, it’s a lot harder to deploy a standard. The software is critical in getting this continuous improvement cycle going, and it starts with seeing what’s really happening on your factory floor.”

Another key productivity challenge in the printing and converting industry is underutilization of equipment, Zlatic says.

Credit: Image by Loya Liu from Pixabay

“A lot of the studies carried out by EFI show that some of the best printing presses are only 40% utilized, meaning that 60% of the time they’re not really creating value,” he says. “You would need to buy two presses to get 80% capacity in that scenario. Once you actually have good visibility on what’s happening on the shop floor, you can get to about 80% capacity utilization — a huge jump. If you’re not focused on seeing what’s happening on your factory floor, you’re only really going to be running at 50%.”

The Packaging Suite from EFI is a modular group of products offering key ERP functions and scalable Certified Workflows that helps label, folding carton, and flexible packaging businesses maximize the physical equipment on the shop floor. Users can boost productivity with data-driven insights into the areas where the most value can be added. Packaging Suite platforms such as the EFI PrintFlow scheduling engine, can ease bottlenecks by automatically adjusting schedules as conditions change. EFI Auto-Count 4D offers users real-time production visibility by automatically collecting accurate, up-to-the minute production data including counts, press status, speed, and other critical information direct from the equipment on the shop floor. The subject of workflow automation is a focus for EFI, and in 2020, the eFlow Automator module was added to the suite. The eFlow Automator can watch for events that users define as important and relevant, and the software can trigger activities as a result, automating routine and repetitive tasks even for actions outside of the EFI ecosystem.

The successful implementation of automation software is a boon for packaging workflow efficiency. It is becoming increasingly central to production as run lengths get shorter, the popularity of customization and personalization continues to soar, customer demands continue to evolve, and of course, the shifts brought about by COVID that have forced businesses to reevaluate the number of people and touchpoints needed to get the job done.

“Efficiency is the biggest benefit of a standardized workflow; standardization being the necessary foundation of any successful automation,” Jan De Roeck, director, industry relations and strategic marketing for Esko, says. “Nowadays, influenced by evolving consumer trends, and brand and retailing competitive intensity, the number of product variations required has expanded significantly, escalating print production complexity and reducing run lengths.”

This is particularly important in packaging, De Roeck says.

“For packaging converters, digitizing the process by which packaging is made is the key to delivering long-term business success,” he says. “Throwing more people into the game, scarce as they are, is no longer a sustainable path forward. Excellence in business performance — the value promise of digital transformation — leads to success by improving process throughput, lowering costs, and delivering client loyalty.”

Esko’s WebCenter packaging management solution allows users to standardize order and job handling, and speed up approval communication. The latest version, WebCenter 21, boosts speed and efficiency further with a range of new features that accelerates approval cycles up to three times and decreases the number of revisions by 60%, while the process management leads to a 50% lead time reduction using just half the resources.

Also in prepress workflow, Esko Automation Engine automates workflow requirements across print processes and feeds all presses, so a single production file is all that is needed for combination print jobs.

“Designed and built by packaging experts, for packaging experts, Automation Engine has established itself over many years as the benchmark for packaging and label prepress workflow automation,” De Roeck says. “The latest 2021 release represents a major step forward for Automation Engine. It introduces a cloud-based deployment option, and an intuitive new Web-based user experience that ensures even the most casual user will be able to initiate, communicate, and work across teams effectively.”

Color Management

Advancements in color management software continue apace, and color consistency is crucial in packaging. Even in corrugated, once available in ‘whichever color you want as long as it’s brown,’ it is now bursting with a whole range of colors and specialty effects thanks to the growth of digital, offering brands another opportunity to connect with customers. Color management software specialist GMG Color has developed new products to support those brands adopting digital technology, such as GMG ColorBook. ColorBook’s digitally printed Pantone color simulations created with GMG ColorServer and GMG OpenColor have been developed to show printers and converters how to simulate Pantone colors and brand colors with fixed ink sets of four to seven inks.

Color standardization and the precise transformation from source color to destination color is at the heart of GMG’s solutions.

“What’s valuable about our software is we’re known for color science, and our ability to make that optimal transformation,” Marc Levine, director of business development for GMG Color, says. “It’s also about calibrating your printing machinery so it’s always printing the same color, job after job after job. Unless you have a good combination of software and hardware working together, it’s difficult to get the results that you expect. That’s the big difference with GMG Color — you can add our solutions to pretty much any print workflow, and we’re going to give you a way to get the color from the original artwork into the final print.”

Levine adds that in a modern packaging workflow, software and hardware are so intertwined, printers and converters should consider both aspects as they pertain to any equipment addition.

“There’s no such thing as just hardware anymore,” Levine says. “Everything you have is hardware with some piece of software in it. Everything is smart. The days of selling software and hardware separately instead of considering how they work together are gone.”

An August 2021 report from McKinsey predicts a post-pandemic wave of product launches, outlining related e-commerce packaging opportunities. Effective software allows package printers and converters to be more reactive, reduce some of the touchpoints throughout production, and crucially speed up the approval process.

“A lot of standardization is about having a clear definition of what the color is and being able to communicate that effectively to your suppliers, and then having a mechanism to approve that color,” Levine says. “The faster you can do that, the quicker you can get from inspiration to shelf. You shorten that cycle by streamlining communication and approval processes.”

Packaging Design

Another software solution that can significantly reduce touchpoints and speed up the approval process is the iC3D Suite from Creative Edge Software. iC3D allows users to generate live 3D virtual visualizations and mock-ups — designing and generating a variety of 3D models with complex, asymmetric designs. Stakeholders can offer feedback, share thoughts, and collaborate through the cloud-based OPSIS tool, which can be viewed via URLs on any device. Mark Hardaker, VP, sales at Creative Edge Software, encapsulates what the business allows users to achieve.

“We accelerate the process from design to final product on the shelf, supporting throughout all stages of the value chain,” Hardaker says.

Hardaker outlines an example of how the iC3D package can stimulate the process of bringing a product to life: Take a well-known gin brand such as Tanqueray that wants to bring a limited-edition bottle to market as a Halloween promotion, and the plan is to release an orange bottle instead of their traditional green. With so many decisions to be made back and forth between marketing teams, brand owners, and packaging companies themselves, all the stakeholders in the process would normally need to sit in face-to-face meetings with physical objects. With iC3D, they are able to generate more visuals, more alternatives, more colorways, the ability to view the bottle as a 75cl version rather than a liter, and so on. It also means the print trial run is more likely to go without a hitch, rather than potentially costly errors after bottles have been purchased, time on the press has been booked, and deadlines for getting the product in stores before the seasonal event has been missed.

As you may be able to imagine, the pandemic was a catalyst for interest in iC3D. Hardaker comments:

“We’ve been saying all along, ʻhey, why don’t we do it virtually?ʼˮ he says. “iC3D is a virtual way to visualize and mockup packaging up to a print quality level, as if you were seeing the product itself. The advantage of iC3D is that we’re working with real print data. We’re working with Illustrator files, we’re adding real RGB and CMYK colors, we’re adding Pantone colors, special effects, gold, bronze, and silver, and then we are ray tracing them in real time.”

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