When the printing
capacity at Accent Etiketten outstripped the ability of the company’s
production scheduling software, the Belgium label printer called on the
services of Hybrid Software. The solution came in the form of a customised
production scheduling tool within the industry-leading workflow software CloudFlow.
“We operate HP Indigo digital
presses and flexo presses,” says Christophe Beke, quality assurance and project
manager. “We had originally written our own software for scheduling jobs, which
operated within the ERP environment and had performed quite adequately.
However, recent investment in our press department meant that the workload
demands had overtaken what our package could handle and we estimated that to
rewrite it would have taken us more than a year.
“Instead, we started examining what was available on
the market and when we looked at the products from Hybrid Software we were
immediately interested in the company’s potential to meet our needs. We liaised
closely with its specialist team of developers in order to tailor its existing
production scheduling tool to our particular requirements and this cooperation
enabled us to reach our current position.”
The
family run business specialises in supplying self-adhesive labels to customers
throughout Belgium, France and Holland. It employs more than 60 people and
operates HP Indigo 6600 and 8800 digital presses as well as eight and
ten-colour flexo presses. These are in use around the clock five days a week
and in addition to scheduling their workloads Accent Etiketten wanted to
include its cutting and packaging facilities.
Bert
Van der Perre is Sales Manager Benelux at HYBRID Software and has been heavily
involved in the project. “In the new environment, job information is sent from
Accent Etiketten’s MIS system directly into CloudFlow using XML files,” he
says. “We set up a device manager within CloudFlow to define the relevant
details of each machine, providing parameters that include minimum run time,
setup time, production speed, number of print stations, time to change rolls
and cleanup time. The solution incorporates an ‘availability calendar’ that
takes into account factors such as staff holidays, maintenance, potential for
extra shifts etc.
“Based
on the technical details of a job and its due date as described in the XML, CloudFlow
checks the machine’s availability and assigns the job to the press or equipment
as well as providing a given time slot. As with all of our CloudFlow-based
solutions, what we have created for Accent Etiketten is available as an HTML5
web interface, so this is readily accessible to other companies,” says Bert Van
der Perre.
The
advantages to Accent Etiketten have been numerous, with optimised scheduling of
orders leading to improvements to delivery times and greater productivity. The
company is a leading label printer in Belgium and during Labelexpo Europe 2017
HP Indigo presented Accent Etiketten with its award ‘Fastest Growth Champion in
Northern Europe’.
Christophe
Beke picks up the story. “All of our pre-press operators use Hybrid Software’s Packz
editing software, so we already had a connection with the supplier,” he says.
“Being able to liaise directly with its software engineers on this new project
was excellent as this meant we benefited from extremely fast replies and
solutions.
“We
implemented the Hybrid Software package in two phases and have been using it
with our digital presses and cutting equipment for about four months. The set
up of our flexo presses is more complex so we left this for phase two, which
started a few weeks ago. The training and installation have all gone well and
we’ve achieved great transparency of the delivery process throughout the
organisation. This new scheduling tool helps us to remain at the forefront of
technology and can be utilised with any future investment made in the
pressroom,” says Mr Beke.
