Automation has become a critical component of the print production workflow. In order for printing companies to compete effectively in today’s challenging print market, productivity and efficiency are essential. With wide-format and specialty printing on the rise, companies in these markets are seeing an increasing need to automate all or part of their operations. A new whitepaper, A Tale of Two Cities: The Past, Present, and Future of Workflow Automation, by industry analyst and author Richard Romano and sponsored by Enfocus Software, looks at how automation can be applied to wide-format printing operations. As the whitepaper identifies, wide-format printers – just like commercial shops before them – perceive themselves to be highly craft-based artisans and that the kinds of projects they produce aren’t suited to an automated approach. And yet, the pressures of the marketplace are forcing them to re-think this. However, not all wide-format printing falls into the “artisanal printing” category, and in fact a tremendous amount of it can be automated to some degree. This whitepaper compares these two “cities” – commercial printing and wide-format printing – and identifies points of comparison. It also examines some software applications and other solutions that can take the automation approach – common in commercial printing – and apply it to wide-format automation.
The whitepaper answers:
- What kinds of processes can be automated?
- What are the criteria for a process to be automated?
- What have been the benefits of – and challenges to – automation for commercial printers?
- How can automation strengthen the relationship between printer and client, especially in the retail sector?
- What is the future of automation?
The whitepaper also identifies software solutions, such as Enfocus Switch and Connect ALL, that can add the desired levels of automation to workflows small and wide. According to PrintPlanet CEO Paul White: “Automation means productivity, and today, optimizing print workflows is the key ingredient to profitability, regardless of the size and nature of printed output. Maximizing profitability is a very important topic – not just for PrintPlanet members, but print businesses in general – and we thank Enfocus for sharing this exclusive report.”
To download this whitepaper, please visit:
http://theprintplanet.com/enfocus-white-paper.html.
