Software - Workflow

Electronics For Imaging, Inc. announced today that Micropress Printers, Ltd. purchased an EFI Midmarket Print Suite.

Electronics For Imaging today announced the availability of two new EFI Fiery digital front ends (DFE) for the updated Xerox Color C60/C70 Printer.

Essel Propack is a leader in the laminated tube market with a 35% global market share in this packaging segment. Several years ago, the company adopted Esko's prepress and workflow solutions across its plants in India. The goal was to manage consistency in brand colours for their multinational clients. Recently, the company signed a new agreement with Esko reflecting its intention to modernize and integrate its workflow, prepress and quality practices in all their major plants located in 14 locations globally.

M. Ram Ramasamy, Chief Operating Officer of Essel Propack, says, “The Essel Group is a frontrunner when it comes to standardizing colour for global brands. With Esko’s solution, we can achieve uniform print quality across various printing processes such as offset, digital, flexo and letterpress. Before our recent contract signing at drupa 2016, our earlier agreement with Esko helped us to standardize the prepress workflow across all the plants in India (Vasind, Wada, Nalagarh and Goa) and in Poland, Germany and China—seven plants so far.”

The signing of a comprehensive global agreement between the two companies at drupa 2016 is considered a significant step for Essel Propack. One of the biggest hardware, software and service agreements concluded at the show, Essel will equip all of its their major plants located in 14 locations globally with Esko’s prepress, design and packaging management solutions. Moreover, Full HD Flexo digital imagers and solutions will be set up within 18 months across all the plants. The company is taking every possible step to detect and fix errors at the initial stages of the workflow and to automate it processes in order to enhance quality, productivity, security and time to market for its brand owner customers.

Speaking about the benefits of standardization, Ramasamy says, “The relationship of Esko and Essel Propack started 15 years ago. Since then, Esko’s solutions have helped us in maintaining quality and efficiency in reproducing brand colours to meet the local and internal customers demand. We want to achieve the highest quality and efficiency by using more or less the same software tools and equipment across all plants. That’s how standardization comes into the picture.”

With Esko’s design, prepress and workflow software and its prototyping and collaborative online tools, Essel Propack can link its existing prepress units to various manufacturing units. As part of the agreement, there will be standard tools across the globe. Ramasamy adds, “In the last few years, with the increase in consumption of tubes, Essel Group has expanded its footprint every year. Hence, automation becomes a necessity to be able to produce more files while reducing the time in supply chain management.

“Clients are involved from the development stage in visualizing the final output. This way consumer product in new and innovative laminated tubes can reach the market as quickly as possible. ’What's more, the Essel Group’s research and development team continue to secure patents in laminated tube design and production.”

John Winderam, General Manager of Esko says: “Esko is very pleased to have strengthened our relationship with Essel Propack. When two leading industry players choose to work together at this level then you can expect great results. We expect our partnership to set a new standard in the design and production of the next generation of laminated tubes.”

Collages plans to offer its professional photographer customers new ways to design and order with the addition of the Taopix Online photo commerce platform.

A strong, collaborative partnership with Esko is at the heart of Schreiner Group’s development of an optimised prepress-workflow in a fast-paced and complex production environment.

Schreiner Group - the German specialist in customised products, solutions and services - supports a number of sectors including pharmaceutical, automotive, electronics, logistics and engineering. Customers include telecommunications businesses, banks and government agencies. Its product portfolio is comprised of innovative specialty labels, including self-adhesive functional parts, RFID labels, printed electronics and security solutions.

Seamless production

The Schreiner Group has been an Esko customer for around 15 years and has high confidence in the Esko’s products, services and staff.

Markus Petratschek, Schreiner Group’s Head of Prepress, says, “Recently, we had been searching for a better collaboration and communication tool and wanted something for internal use, but also to help us communicate more effectively externally. We wanted to be able to keep the internal team up to date on our own communication, as well as project planning and status. Further, we also wanted to allow external parties to see the latest updates on the latter. It ensures up to the moment transparency, which keeps clients fully informed.

The Schreiner Group chose Esko WebCenter to meet these challenges. WebCenter manages packaging production, approval and project life cycle. From specification and execution to design and content management, it makes easy work of handling, classifying and organising all packaging assets.”

He continues, “We needed a solution that could easily be customised to our business and be integrated with our existing IT-systems. WebCenter offered smooth and simple installation.”

Other solutions the company has in place from Esko include ArtPro, a packaging preproduction editor offering dedicated tools that reduces cost and increases efficiency of packaging prepress software; DeskPack, a collection of packaging prepress plugins for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop that fit any prepress environment; and Automation Engine, a modular workflow server for prepress workflow automation that is easy to set up and operate, reduces error and increases efficiency. It also has a CDI Spark for the in-house production of flexo plates.

“Esko offers a complete solution and a future oriented tool,” Petratschek adds. “The products can easily be customised to exactly fit our process workflow. We also work closely with the Esko experts who are behind the product to get the most from the development process. This collaboration benefits both organisations and is a key element of our close partnership.”

Achieving goals

“The watchword these days is ‘Industry 4.0,’ or the fourth industrial revolution,” Petratschek explains. “This means that all hardware and software must be able to integrate and communicate. The aim of our customers and of Schreiner Group is highest quality runs completed faster and just in time – with a minimum of human interaction. Having clear workflow processes is crucial, and our Esko suite of solutions gives us a robust platform to work from in achieving these goals.”

Eva Jarošová-Korte, Sales Account Manager of Esko says: “Through our close working relationship with the Schreiner Group, we help them further improve their day-to-day production. At the same time, they challenge us and raise critical questions that help us further develop future Esko products, keeping us on our toes and helping us make sure that we continue to lead the market with our solutions.”

At Graph Expo 2016, HP Inc. announced new HP PrintOS capabilities and extended compatibility to additional digital press models.