In today’s print business, everyone wishes they could produce more in less time with the same resources. Print production workflow automation has been the focus for years to stay competitive in a reality defined by more orders, more personalization, lower order value, shorter turnaround times and less margin to play with to get the job in and out the door. Workflow automation is not a new concept in the industry, but statistics show that most of the printers don’t automate more than 75% of their workflow. Automating prepress is good, but why stopping there? What about print finishing?
As the saying goes: No job is done until it’s finished. For many production managers, print finishing is viewed as a production bottleneck. No matter the printing method, offset or digital, transferring product from one equipment to another isn’t always the easiest procedure. And with the rise of web-to-print systems, it’s no longer a few large jobs on pallets but many different small ones that requires to be entered manually into the binder, saddle-stitcher, cutter, slitter-creaser, 3-knife cutter, and all type of print finishing equipment required to transform a stack of paper into a finished product. And if there is an error of entry on a guillotine for example, then the whole stack of paper is waste, the job needs to be reworked and the revenues are greatly affected.
Automating the finishing process prevents that kind of situation production managers are facing every day. Ultimate Bindery®, Ultimate TechnoGraphics’ finishing automation software, validates jobs before even printing, which prevents costly errors and reduces waste, and set up every print finishing equipment automatically to reduce manual make ready and data entry. Linking your prepress to your postpress is achievable.
About Ultimate Bindery®
Ultimate Bindery® is a standalone software solution designed to fill the gap between prepress and finishing. Ultimate Bindery® can take any JDF imposed job and complete it with all the necessary parameters needed to automatically set up your finishing equipment such as perfect binder, saddle-stitcher, cutter, slitter-creaser, 3-knife cutter, etc. It allows to produce variable length products in different quantities, on the fly with no manual make-ready.
Ultimate Bindery® is a hub of knowledge of many different finishing devices from different manufacturers and can automate in-line and near-line finishing equipment. It operates as a central location to validate that each job is built respecting the capabilities and constraints of the selected finishing equipment. These validations prevent errors and reduce waste since an alert is sent to the user for them to rectify the situation.