Esko has launched WebCenter 12, which responds to two distinct packaging and consumer trends: the proliferation of product variations driven by mass-customisation and personalisation and the increased pressure on regulatory compliance – the need to accurately incorporate the required regulatory information on packaging and related materials.
The aim of this WebCenter release is to help customers to address four eminent challenges directly originating from these market trends:
1. Keep every stakeholder informed
Following its successful introduction of communication ‘on the go’ for iPads whereby files can be accessed anytime anywhere, WebCenter 12 now extends this capability to iPhones. This enables the sales team to get updates on the progress of a job before visiting a customer, said Jijo Dominic, Product Manager Web Solutions at Esko. Built-in integration with Automation Engine and ArtiosCAD and enhanced third-party interfacing capabilities makes the integration of WebCenter into existing workflows fast and easy. WebCenter 12 acts as a Web-to-Production portal and involves the packaging buyer more deeply in package design and production. Design requests are automatically created and a range of tasks are executed on the workflow server without any operator intervention.
2. Manage long approval cycles
A smooth approval process is essential to streamlining production, and that is something WebCenter users are already effectively harnessing. The WebCenter tools that manage a chain of approvals deliver immediate return on investment. This is further strengthened in WebCenter 12 with enhanced compare capabilities, which highlights the alterations by blinking or displaying the intensity of variation for easier location and review. In addition, the Viewer allows real time collaboration on multiple pages as well as online quality control of printing plates.
The new WebCenter reporting function is devised to help businesses measure and report their success internally and externally. Not only will WebCenter users be able to track savings made through improved workflow practices and processes, they will also be able to communicate those values to their clients in a better way. There might be one link in the approval chain that is generally the slowest to respond. Using the reporting module, this shortfall can be identified and addressed, said Dominic. The regulatory requirement to have braille content on pharmaceutical packaging has created a new challenge in the packaging approval process. This demands easy to use tools for the legal department to review content in braille and for the production team to verify how it can be achieved best.
Through collaboration with Global Vision (www.globalvisioninc.com), Esko has been able to take these capabilities even further so that braille text can be scanned and verified by a reader that will translate it to prevent errors.
3. Manage the overall packaging process from design to shelf
WebCenter is enhanced with cascading fields, which provide requirements in an intelligent manner with smart filtering and auto filling, rich text fields to provide long briefs and pictorial labels that explain concepts visually. WebCenter 12 standardizes the overall project request, prevents errors and lost data and minimises human intervention.
4. Handle versions of packages and labels
Each individual element of a packaging design created in the development process is an asset. Managing those assets and re-using them is critical for keeping production cost under control, added Dominic. To achieve this, WebCenter 12 is extended with user friendly and very powerful asset classification and searching capabilities with a fully customizable graphical asset browser based on document metadata and custom attributes. Furthermore, customisation creates different asset browsing views depending on the profile of user. For instance, a brand manager can browse through assets using a brand and product hierarchy while a printer can browse through the assets using printer and print related search terms. Customers can effectively set their own classifications for easy retrieval.
ANTALIS SOUTH AFRICA (PTY) LTD (+27 11) 688 6000 marketing@antalis.co.za www.antalis.co.za
