26 Aug 2025
For the majority of respondents in WhatTheyThink’s Printing Outlook 2025 the answer was no.
Increasing plant productivity was the number one challenge for 40% of operations. It was also number one last year. In 2019 it was a concern for just 18% of businesses.
The industry is under pressure from several challenges that include the need to:
Deliver a more varied mix of work - 20% of respondents were considering diversifying their print product application offerings with the top opportunities ranked as adding packaging printing capabilities for 8% and adding digital label/wrapper printing capabilities for 5%.
Address the shortage of skilled staff - 36% of respondents said finding skilled staff was a challenge. While it was an issue pre-pandemic, it has become especially acute in the five years since. This is fuelling the impetus to invest in workflow automation.
Evolve with technology - Two years ago adding high-speed production inkjet printing equipment was the focus for 19% of respondents which more than halved to 8% last year and 5% for the latest survey. Adding toner-based digital printing equipment has fallen from 12% two years ago to 7% this year. Replacing toner-based digital equipment with production inkjet is up from 8% to 10% and disposing of offset equipment to concentrate on digital printing is down from 6% to 5%.For this year’s survey, 22% said they had no planned investment. It seems the focus is moving away from introducing new technologies to consolidating existing capabilities. Many are also exploring the option of acquiring another company to access fresh competences.
These operational considerations and more can be positively influenced by the introduction of the appropriate automation. So, it will be no surprise that workflow automation software is the number two planned investment at 16%. It follows finishing equipment for digital production which was the top focus for 23%.
Automation can have an impact in two distinct ways – either being built into production equipment or being used to combine multiple processes into one operation such as getting the jobs to production, tracking progress and then completing any extra processing steps before delivery and billing.
As we have seen every operation faces different opportunities and challenges that automation could address. To ensure the correct areas are benefiting, and to identify the most effective next steps, an assessment should be undertaken – either from an internal team or using external expertise. The latter’s fresh set of eyes could also see what new best practices should be incorporated.
It is important to automate what can be addressed effectively first and then treat the exceptions.
However, identifying pain points and addressing them is not only the factor. The cost in terms of time and monetary value to realize the improvement should also be evaluated.
Automating the complete manufacturing process is often talked about, but it is only practical in a limited number of scenarios. The best approach is to use the assessment of the operations and implement the ones that will have the greatest impact from a cost perspective, as well as staff operations.
From a hardware perspective, Konica Minolta’s inline Intelligent Quality Optimiser IQ-601 supports repeatable and consistent color. It allows the front-to-back registration of the prints to be set in a very easy process and provides press linearization at the touch of a button, or in an automatically scheduled manner. Color profiling and verification is available, indicating when the prints are passing certain criteria, or to identify work that needs to be done on the press and can now be completed in minutes when combined with the appropriate controller and color management software. This is simplified so that any operator can easily reprofile materials without having detailed color management knowledge. Presses are also now able to automatically measure, identify and correct image defects such as streaks, spots, stains and inky backsides, resulting in improved uptime and the elimination of a significant amount of service calls needed.
Continued improvements with inline and nearline finishing capabilities on presses help address a broader product mix. Inline cutting using the TU-510e can be completed for items such as business cards, postcards, brochures, four-sided trim and creating perforated output. New inline capabilities include the availability for inline cold lamination of the printed material with different laminates available.
With software one of the simplest ways to introduce workflow automation can be through hot folders for job submission. Many of the repetitive processes can be defined by a series of rules and then automated, with different solutions available that can be identified during the assessment. There are different options that are tailored for different workflow complexities, automation required and volumes. In theory, a job can go from initial submission directly to printing without any human intervention. Quality check points can be introduced to ensure quality and effectiveness of hardware utilization.
This approach can be further enhanced with the integration of the process workflow with ecommerce solutions. A recent application focused on the use of an ecommerce solution directly into a production workflow for a print facility with two operators and four presses. This resulted in the presses being fully loaded without the addition of multiple new staff doing repetitive operations.
