Automation

Streamlined mailing processes can unlock improved efficiency and cost reductions for print service providers and in-plant print operations. Enhancing these processes can drive increased productivity, shorten turnaround times, and elevate customer satisfaction. 

For print operations, the journey toward optimizing mailing processes involves focusing on aspects such as quality control, postage rates, and personalized direct mail. Emphasizing efficiency can lead to substantial benefits.

Integrated mailing operations strengthens the operational workflow. Applying data analytics for targeted mailing campaigns and automating workflow processes decreases manual interventions, resulting in a smoother operation. A thorough understanding of postal issues, combined with strategic use of software and hardware, can revolutionize the way print service providers and in-plant operations handle their mailing tasks. Updating the mailing operation can convert a dreaded chore into a customer satisfaction strategy and a new revenue source.

Digitization of the print industry has leaped over the last two decades. The average shop floor today is significantly more automated than it was 20 years ago. All front-end functions, administrative departments, presses, and e-commerce platforms are managed by workflow and MIS systems that share information for higher efficiency and productivity.

The bindery department, often the most labor-intensive area of the shop, had lagged somewhat, with job-ticket information not making it quite as far as the folders, cutters, and gluers. Part of the reason is the multi-faced aspects of bindery. After printing, paper can be die-cut, bound, folded, stamped, jogged, trimmed, or embellished with coatings, foils, and other decorative elements. Over the last few years, though, manufacturers have turned out automated versions of traditional devices, bringing automation to the back of the shop.

The final installment of our three-part labor series focuses on employing automation as a competitive advantage.

In the first part of this series, we analyzed the aging, skilled labor market—the trend of older employees leaving the workforce and strategies for recruiting youthful as well as more mature workers. Next, we delved into how to hold on to staffers already on the payroll.  In Part 3 of three, we analyze automation advancements as part of the solution to printing industry staffing shortages.

With the overall cost of doing business increasing and production volumes decreasing, how can print service providers (PSPs) maintain profit margins and still make money? The ability to print more jobs at faster rates becomes paramount. Automated technologies allow employees to perform critical pre-press, printing, and post-press operations without requiring years of experience as apprentices or junior assistants. For example, achieving precise colors on the press has become a case of science trumping subjectivity, according to Shawn Sundquist, president and CEO of Range Printing, Inc. (Brainerd, MN).

“In some respects, the skilled-labor shortage has forced the issue,” says Sundquist, a third-generation leader at the company his grandfather founded 55 years ago. “There is definitely an older demographic in our pressroom running the presses,” he notes, lamenting that the vast majority of younger workers don’t seem to care much about the intricacies of mechanical inner-workings.

“Young people are used to pressing the ‘easy button,’” Sundquist observes.

The printing business is awash in advanced technology and automation. One can walk around the trade shows to observe software and equipment everywhere that handles many of the tasks formerly dependent on experienced printing professionals. Automation enables printing companies to produce more work in less time and at lower costs. But that doesn’t eliminate the need for skilled humans to envision solutions, monitor progress, and include new technology in efficient workflows. And legacy equipment still in use at most print facilities will require educated operators.

For quite some time this industry will need talented individuals dedicated to keeping print a viable and valuable means of communicating information-and that’s a problem.

Printers operating without a MIS system are flying blind

It is easy to tell if a print operation is making money by looking at profit and loss reports. Not so simple is finding the information management needs to make decisions such as determining how much work they can add before purchasing new equipment or when to hire more people. And recognizing the point to adjust pricing for individual jobs or accounts is nearly impossible without a system to capture job level data and generate cost analysis reports.

In many shops, job cost data from the production floor is randomly collected and rarely reviewed. Making the task even harder, many shops use separate, unconnected processes to handle estimates, order entry, job scheduling, postage deposits, time tracking, inventory, and billing. Employees manually copy information generated by one software system into another, leading to errors and omissions. Real time data is unavailable, rendering informed daily production adjustments impossible.

In environments where managers cannot compare job-level costs to budgets or estimates, changing conditions or inefficiencies can make it possible to unknowingly lose money on jobs–and do it repetitively.