The Push To Be a More Versatile Printer

prwhite

Administrator
Staff member
The Push To Be a More Versatile Printer
By Santosh Mulay, InSoft Automation

As the printing industry continues to evolve, printers face the challenge of becoming more agile and responsive to meet fast-paced changes in technology and the increasingly varied demands of print buyers. Earlier, printers specialized in single products -- such as books, commercial jobs, packaging jobs, labels, and signage. However, with the rise of digital printing, time consuming and skilled processes like finishing, cutting, and embellishments are now simplified with digital finishing applications. Today, printers must be versatile and able to order winning quotes and produce multiple print products under one roof. This shift has created challenges for printers in the pre-press, planning, and estimation areas.

Challenges in Pre-press—Printers dealing with multiple printing technologies or print products are often forced to maintain multiple imposition software. For example, they are forced to use one software for imposing books and another dedicated packaging software for folding cartons. Even if these two products are from the same label, they usually have different design philosophies and methodologies. This increases the complexity of workflow (automated or not) in the pre-press department. Printers build and maintain complex rules and logic themselves to generate correct impositions for all scenarios.

Challenges in layout planning—The same job can often be routed through different equipment. A folding carton can be printed on sheet-fed offset and cut with conventional dyes OR printed on a digital web with inline rotary dye. There are multiple factors that determine the most economical route. Resolving such options correctly requires expert planners, often using different software products for the two routes.

Challenges in quoting—Should printers restrict their print product portfolios (types and sizes) to improve their ability to quickly generate accurate quotes? This is a problem that many manufacturers struggle with, often choosing to either compromise on what they offer their customers or getting ready to have a longer quotation cycle that requires the expert in-house planner to work out the optimal production route and print-layouts.

Imp Software by InSoft Automation offers an excellent solution to versatile printers facing these challenges. The company’s layout planning and imposition software Imp, encapsulates all the complexity of calculating and preparing imposed layouts internally, thus keeping things clean and simple for printers.

Imp Software automatically calculates the optimal production route and imposition plan for the entire range of printed products, making it easy for users to create layouts for:
  • Packaging cartons,
  • Labels,
  • Rigid boxes,
  • Flyers,
  • Folded leaflets,
  • Books,
  • Magazines, and
  • Forms.
Imp Software works with all press types, including:
  • Conventional sheet-fed/web-fed offset presses,
  • Variable sleeve offset presses,
  • Sheet/continuous feed digital presses,
  • Flatbed/roll-to-roll large format presses, and
  • Flexo presses.
Using its sophisticated ganging and nesting engine, Imp Software automatically calculates the imposition, irrespective of the type of job, size of job, and type of printing or cutting.

Imp Software is a valuable investment for any print shop looking to diversify its print production capabilities or simplify its workflow. Finding the optimal production route and generating a quote, along with ready to print imposition, is now just a click away! For more information, look here.
 

PressWise

A 30-day Fix for Managed Chaos

As any print professional knows, printing can be managed chaos. Software that solves multiple problems and provides measurable and monetizable value has a direct impact on the bottom-line.

“We reduced order entry costs by about 40%.” Significant savings in a shop that turns about 500 jobs a month.


Learn how…….

   
Back
Top