Automating Print Estimation

The push for automation is never ending. It was workflow automation, then web-to-print right from creating artwork online, ordering, tracking jobs status, and the print production is streamlined with unmanned automation. The industry, its machinery and way of doing business are changing faster than ever before and automation must keep pace with these changes. The digital world is all around us and all of us expect instant solutions.

Machine Learning techniques have been applied to estimation for more than a decade now with significant success in certain domains and not so much in some. With respect to the cost estimation for printing, the results do not seem up to the mark.

The challenge is that real world mathematics of cost estimation for print products is non-linear. Some-times, just a millimeter change in the dimension of a product could cause a significant difference in the cost, as the fit of the product on the print layout could change. Training ML/AI models for such scenarios is difficult, if not impossible. Further, the model can fail when challenged with jobs outside the training data, directly leading to monetory losses. In financial matters, the emphasis on precision as well as accuracy is much higher. To generate confidence in the quote they send out, users generally want to look at the actual impositions/layouts based on which cost estimates are made. However, that is not possible when using AI/ML technics.

The essential task of an MIS is managing the job after the order confirmation. The quotation cycles before the order confirmation can be considered as a welcome add-on module to an MIS for a much smoother and more integrated system. But if the estimation module of the MIS is not accurate with its numbers, then it makes a lot of sense to have independent, more accurate estimation software.

The lifecycle of a job starts with a customer query and ends with delivery of a finished product. An important event in this lifecycle is, the customer accepting a quote and confirming an order. It is only then that the job hits the production line.InSoft’s Imp layout planning software is used by many MIS systems to improve the accuracy of their estimation modules. The benefit of using such MIS, that base their cost estimation on precise layouts calculated by a smart layout planning tool, is tremendous.

There are many printers who have MIS that do not have such an estimation module. For them, InSoft offers Imp+, a smart and highly adaptable estimation tool. Almost all of our customers who use this tool, export an XML file from our software that is later imported into their MIS to create a new order in their production environment.

InSoft Automation’s print estimation module built on top of its robust cost-based layout planning engine generates consistently accurate estimates. Quotes can be automated with hot folders. The module is delivered with standard logics to calculate some of the standard costs like printing, cutting, binding etc. However, these are completely customizable, allowing higher accuracy. Furthermore, new custom operations that are a specialty of the printer can also be implemented easily.

At InSoft estimation is not just about simplifying estimating complex jobs. It is also about generating order winning quotes. Take the guesswork out of your numbers.

Sashikanth Goparaju
CTO, InSoft Automation