Reduce the Anxiety of Deciding on Digital

Fierce competition within the label industry has put you under great pressure to reduce decision making time, as you race to beat rivals to market. Being able to understand, design and configure a versatile label printing plant to meet the needs of your customer is critical. And with more of your customers and competition turning to digital printing and converting technologies, it is clearly time to understand the impact this could have on your business.

So how do you best decide on what the impact of going digital would be?
Manufacturing process simulation or “discrete event” simulation can reduce the stomach-churning induced by contemplating a big investment. How? By allowing a user to model the effect of the investment on a PC before actually making it.

A good model allows you to react to change and make risk free decisions rapidly, accurately and efficiently. It outlines the effect on productivity, profitability or delivery time of an investment in capital equipment, people or other resources. It lets you play with variables like the number of operators on a shift, the rate at which new orders arrive and their size, and the time taken for each step in a process. It will show you bottlenecks and let you see the effect of different assumptions on throughput.

At Prototype & Production Systems our experts can help you understand how going digital will change your profitability, workflows and return on investment. We can work with you to make sure you fully understand the costs and benefits of adding digital inkjet technology to your plant.

Our simulation system is capable of generating useful reports, such as the utilization rate of the assets. We can work with you to understand the impacts of different “what if ” scenarios. For example:

• What if the run speed of the digital printer were only 50% of the flexo press and offline diecutter?
• What if the hourly costs of the different printing systems were different?
• What if the cost of digital ink (or a click charge) changed?
• How does the volume of completed jobs change if every job needs new plates and dies?
• What is the effect of doubling (or halving) the number of jobs my sales force brings in per day?
• How does average run-length affect productivity and profitability?

Because the simulator can run through a month’s production in seconds, and it can apply a random element to many of the variables it uses, it is possible to run dozens of experiments with different assumptions, and to export the results to create graphs that provide you with the insights into the behavior of the different workflows under different conditions.

If you would like to learn more about how going digital could benefit you and how to make an informed, evidence based decision, please contact us today.