The automation of craftThe craft of automationWhen low-touch printing makes high-quality products

At its heart, printing has always been about craft. About taking the best materials for the job and combining them sensitively for the best possible outcome.

In the old days, press operators knew their presses inside out and got their hands inky. They made decisions at the press that would make or break a print run.

A lot has changed since those days. Printers are under immense pressure to deliver bigger, better, more innovative services while still managing to turn a profit. To keep pace, they are seeking efficiencies everywhere. That means embracing automation.

A lot has stayed the same, too. Technologies come and go, print productions scale up and down. But the ultimate goal persists: printers live to print – to perfect their craft and meet the demands of the job at hand, whether it’s a simple poster or a personalized mailer.

On the surface, these two forces appear to pull printers in different directions. The creative, high-touch nature of craft gives its all to the smallest detail. Advanced automation and streamlined workflows create efficiencies at vast scale, cutting the number of human touches needed to receive, plan, execute and deliver print jobs.

If the ideal is a zero-touch process, the question arises: how do craft and automation coexist in digital printing?

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The two sides of digital printing

The automation of craft The craft of automation

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‘Good, fast, cheap. You can only pick two.’

That’s the old saying about meeting your client’s requirements. You can get the best quality on a tight turnaround, but it’ll cost you. Need great work but you’re on a budget? Don’t hold your breath. Half the price and a squeezed deadline? You get the picture…

This system of creative give and take is built on a long-standing assumption that the quality of a product goes down when the speed and scale of its production go up. Put another way: craft and automation are chalk and cheese.

We think this assumption is false. We believe that craft and automation are not opposites but complementary forces. That the craft or printing is alive and well in print shops today. And that their success can be credited in large part to the zone where automation meets craft.

The automation of craft The craft of automation

The way we see it, there are three impulses at play in the craft mindset:

Craft is the skillful, cost-effective creation of a quality product. It’s not wasteful and it’s not a fluke. It can be done again and again with the same standard of output.

When we look at the reasons printers use automation – the things they set out to achieve with it – we see the same trio of driving forces.

Efficiency to meet high demand quickly and within the constraints of cost.

Quality to fulfill the potential of their craft.

Consistency to deliver unfaltering results to customers who need them.

Print processes have changed dramatically over the years, but we believe the pursuit of these goals has never been better served than it is today.

The craft mindset is alive not just in the press operator but in the men and women creating web-to-print storefronts, designing end-to-end workflows, calibrating machines and using software to remotely manage high-quality, super-consistent, streamlined print jobs in plants around the globe. User-friendly technology has sparked a process of democratization, making creative automation accessible to more print professionals every day.

And we don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the spirit of the craftsman can be found in the technology itself: the software that directs the flow of work and the machines that power the production of quality prints.

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Three characteristics of craft

The automation of craft The craft of automation

Craft

Quality Consistency

Efficiency

Automation in practice

Simplify and automate. If printers get these two things right, they can grow their operational capacity without compromising quality.

We know it takes something special to understand print processes well enough to make them work better. They may not have inky hands, but the people who design and execute automated workflows make as real an impact on a print run as the press operators from back in the day.

Like the team at Variable Image Printing in California, where they created a ‘build-a-book’ application that lets customers tailor book orders online before sending them to print automatically. From the web to the printer and on to the finisher, the process is automated – even for more complex jobs like saddle-stitch books.

“Repeat online orders take about 75 percent less time to process than they did traditionally and the job tickets created by the system ensure finishing is consistent since we can store production information about the job in the template.”

Kevin LiteVariable Image Printing

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The automation of craft The craft of automation

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Troy Fischer, head of process and systems at integrated comms company, Henry Wurst Inc., believes it’s not good enough to just fix a problem if the system that caused it remains unimproved.

Troy and his team use an automated workflow that identifies and reroutes exceptions so that the standard can be adjusted to handle similar exceptions in future. Don’t fix imperfections after the event – build quality into the process from the start. It’s a great philosophy.

“Manual interventions are the bane of my existence. My goal is to encourage everyone to fix the system and not try to put quality in at the end of the process. It’s not sustainable that way.”

Troy Fischer Henry Wurst, Inc.

As an enabler of craft, automation is a means to an end, but at its best it becomes a craft in itself, as Fox Valley Technical College’s print department showed with its creative use of workflow batching to help cut lead time of two weeks to two days.

“We began batching differently, splitting runs – getting creative to keep jobs moving. Now we track every single thing we do, and gather the information we need to be more efficient.”

Shana Farrell Fox Valley Technical College (Wisconsin) Graphic Arts & Printing Technologies Center

The automation of craft The craft of automation

Print craft in an automated future

Automation has landed, and print will never be the same again. Customer demand is always changing, and printers face growing pressure to produce high quality products at higher speed and greater scale every year.

But it will always be a craft. And as long as the need for quality, consistency and efficiency persists, the craft of printing will flourish. The same demands that feed the craft mindset are answered by the thoughtful application of automation. Wherever you see them, you’ll also find printers seeking new ways to perfect their creative work.

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Further reading

Looking for more reasons why you should automate your workflow? Here are ten, to get you started.

The automation of craft The craft of automation

10 Reasons to Automate Your WorkflowStreamline your printing processes for business growth opportunities

Download

We’re Xerox.

Xerox helps print providers work better by combining people, processes and technology in more efficient and cost-effective ways.

To find out more, visit xerox.com

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