Inland Packaging has used tilia Phoenix AI technology to streamline production at its facility in Wisconsin. The American label specialist is now initiating an ongoing programme of technical innovation.
The company made the decision to invest in tilia Phoenix to alleviate pre-production bottlenecks that were becoming increasingly problematic due to a growing customer base and more jobs per customer.
The solution itself comes from Tilia Labs, a developer of planning, imposition and automation software solutions for the graphic arts industries. It uses AI to fully automate the creation of effective, print-ready impositions across potentially millions of possibilities.
‘Things that work when you’re smaller don’t work when you have double, triple, quadruple the orders,’ said Inland’s business analyst and programmer, Willie Spindler. ‘As production ramped up, the amount of manpower we would need to force jobs through was daunting. My chief concern was ensuring that, from order to production, the amount of effort required is as minimal as possible. After getting Tilia Labs in to give us a demo, we realised right away that Phoenix was exactly the solution we’d been looking for.’
The system factors in parameters, such as job specifications, presses and print devices, post-press requirements, and delivery considerations, to suggest optimal layout options. When a final option has been selected, tilia Phoenix generates print-ready layouts and JDF or die instructions, for all devices in the production chain. As well as up-front tasks, Inland has felt the benefit of Phoenix’s open architecture through the entire job fulfilment. Feeding Phoenix exports downstream has enabled the company to eliminate data entry duplication and potential errors.
