High level of Automation at 4Packaging

Starting as a family business back 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.

Total Control

4Packaging’s production is controlled by a commercial and ERP/MIS production system (4POS) developed by their own IT team to 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 whilst also being able to communicate seamlessly with their ERP/MIS system. They decided upon HYBRID Software’s PACKZ and CLOUDFLOW.

One of the reasons 4Packaging chose PACKZ and CLOUDFLOW was because of the improved efficiency the products would deliver. 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 can be created much more efficiently, and correction cycles are accelerated.

Switch to PDF

PACKZ, HYBRID Software’s PDF Editor, allows 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.

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 and increased 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 just the right moment in the process.

In addition, the CLOUDFLOW Packzflow Option provides prepress features that are completely driven by job ticket information. 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.

David Möller says: “We are always searching 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. What´s more, 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 will only be working with common PDF files in which fonts and images are embedded automatically.”

“When you look at the way we have built CLOUDFLOW, a function and its API call have often been developed before its user interface,” reports Christopher Graf, HYBRID Software’s Chief Marketing Officer. “This makes the API very robust, as our developers are using it, from the first step.” That´s why the API comes with such an extensive set of features. Thanks to the API, the 4Packaging IT team can invent new solutions to relieve the operators from some or all of the workload. 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.

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.