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Prinect Production Scheduler |
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Who doesn’t know the challenge of a customer calling after their job is already somewhere in production: “We need to change the image on page 37!” What is a normal everyday customer request is a big challenge to production planning.
How do you know where the job is? Is it still somewhere in Prepress, already plated, or even on the press? In most cases this is not too difficult to find out with some phone calls, but then informing everyone in the production chain about making the changes is a challenge.
Most printers today try to stay on-top of these issues with a manual planning board and regular planning meetings. Some printers have even different boards for Prepress, the press room and the bindery. However, what seems to be a good idea is a nightmare for the planners in busy times and results in a lot of hours spent by management trying to monitor production using a manual system that is often not in tune with what’s really happening.
Usually someone changes parameters by hand on the job bag after the phone call comes in, but that could be forgotten, missed or the notes may not be clear to everyone. Besides the lack of cost accounting as this change obviously was not calculated into the deal, the biggest limitation is understanding the effect of the change to the rest of the production process.
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This is where Heidelberg’s new Prinect Scheduler helps to plan, monitor and improve the planning of jobs in production.
The electronic scheduling board is a real-time window into production and provides complete transparency to production management and staff. Because the system sits on the central server, access levels are granted by user login. Everyone could be given access to see the board – but only one or two people for instance may be allowed to apply changes to the board. The Prinect Scheduler’s aim is not to replace skilled planning staff, but to support their work and make the most of the available production time. If a job change occurs for example to use different stock, the Prinect Scheduler will adjust the length of production automatically if the speed on press and the stitcher has to be reduced.
Depending on the system set-up, the Prinect Scheduler can be configured to include the pressroom only or cover Prepress and Postpress as well. Different screen views give a fast overview of all connected processes and equipment capacities. Various planning strategies can be used depending on the requirements while the system will automatically check availability deadlines for plates, paper and ink and in case give reminders and warnings.
Prinect Scheduler supports forward scheduling (start now), backwards scheduling (schedule backwards to finish at a specific date or time) and priority scheduling (without specific starting/ending time, for instance produce as the second job that day). Flexibility and efficiency can be improved by flagging the need to adjust shift patterns or overtime with plenty of notice. If for example a job next week will run slightly longer than the shift, it might make sense to extend the shift than restart the job the next morning.
Jobs can also be just dragged & dropped into the plan and manually moved if required. Jobs with the same spot colours or the same folding sequences are easily identified and can be scheduled together to save make-ready time. The Scheduler also provides a capacity to overview each machine to identify bottlenecks. Maintenance times on equipment and public holidays are also managed automatically.
The Prinect Scheduler was shown at drupa and will be released to customers in Australia and new Zealand later this year.
Further Information:
Soeren Lange
Product Manager – Prepress & Workflow
Tel. +61 3 9263 3386
Email: Soeren.Lange@heidelberg.com
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