4Packaging has installed HYBRID Software PACKZ and CLOUDFLOW to assure seamless communication between the 4Packaging MIS/ERP and a fast, efficient means to engrave gravure cylinders for their customers.
The story of 4Packaging
What began as a family business taking root in 2000, 4Packaging is now a leading company in gravure and embossing tool manufacturing as well as in digital reproduction in Germany and South Africa.
4Packaging’s production is completely organised with a self-made commercial and ERP/MIS production system (4POS) developed by their own IT team. With that they can track all their production jobs, which consists of over 140 gravure cylinders and 4 embossing forms per day. However, along with a successful ERP/MIS system, 4Packaging needed a world-class prepress production system to prepare artwork files and output them quickly for engraving. Also required was a system that would be able to communicate seamlessly with their ERP/MIS system. They decided upon HYBRID Software’s PACKZ and CLOUDFLOW.
Why choosing HYBRID Software
One of the reasons 4Packaging chose PACKZ and CLOUDFLOW was because of the improved efficiency that would come with the products. Especially beneficial for 4Packaging was PACKZ and CLOUDFLOW’s powerful TIFF output capabilities for gravure. Thanks to multi-threading, most of the power is harnessed straight through the power of their state-of-the-art server. Cylinder data is able to be created much more efficiently, and correction cycles are accelerated.
PACKZ, HYBRID Software’s PDF Editor, allows for quick access to step and repeat tools with simultaneous work on forms, file launch and live file rendering. In fact, 4Packaging transformed their entire system to a PDF workflow.
Combining PACKZ and CLOUDFLOW
PACKZ and CLOUDFLOW, HYBRID’s workflow server, form a seamless, integrated integration and allow prepress operators to be involved in the complete job production process. By combining the use of the two products, 4Packaging has built an efficient solution introducing workflow automation, thereby increasing manual work efficiency. For example, 4Packaging’s prepress operators no longer need to search for files, as the workflow intelligently supplies the file to them at the right moment of their process.
In addition, the CLOUDFLOW Packzflow Option provides prepress features that are completely driven by information on the job ticket. Packzflow effortlessly relocates a job’s order information from the MIS/ERP directly into production information. This information can also allow the system to prepare files before they are manually edited.
“When you look at the way we are building CLOUDFLOW, a function and its API call is often developed before its user interface,” shares Christopher Graf, HYBRID Software’s Chief Marketing Officer. “This makes the API very robust, as our developers are using it, from the first step.” This explains how the API comes with such an extensive set of features. Thanks to the API, the 4Packaging IT team can invent new solutions to remove part or all of the workload from its workers. In fact, after a few weeks of team training and coaching with HYBRID Software Solution Architects, the development team of 4Packaging had already begun building a number of their own new, clever solutions.
Higher automation and fewer errors
David Möller says: “We always search for new options to assure the best quality available on the market. Thus, why we made the switch to HYBRID Software. By using their workflow automation software CLOUDFLOW, we can achieve a higher level of automation in our processes and a lower error rate. Besides, our highly-qualified operators can focus on more complex steps of the orders. PACKZ allows us to prepare delivered data for the printing process and avoid errors caused by file conversions. From now on, we only work with common PDF files in which fonts and images are embedded automatically.”
Through this cooperation between 4Packaging and HYBRID Software engineers—and a powerful API—a fast, seamless, successful working prepress solution has been put into place that, along with the 4Packaging in-house MIS/ERP, is unlike any other.
Visit the 4Packaging website here.
