Do You Need a Dedicated Workflow for Digital Textile Print?

Is Workflow Necessary?

You have a workflow, whether it is a formal set of software solutions and process steps or a set of sticky notes and knowledge held by experts on your production floor. The question is do you have an optimized workflow? This is a great time to look at the options for tuning up your existing workflow processes and adding new workflow solutions to optimize throughput and margins.

Starting with the basics, your textile workflow should have a way to capture job requirements in a consistent and comprehensive way. It should have a way to interact with business systems to capture, track and close the loop on the accounting. You will also want to interface to the systems used to manage manufacturing requirements and material movement, including spreadsheets, job travelers or Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) that manage inventories of raw materials. That means ensuring you have workflow tools that will play well with your business and production systems. Look for solutions with APIs and SDKs to ensure data captured can be turned into actionable information.

Your workflow should be capable of pushing files from onboarding through to preparation for print in as automated a manner as possible. Your goal is to ensure that the files sent to the DFE for the press are normalized and optimized. If you cannot onboard a job, get it set up, preflight it, take care of any anomalies and get it into production with minimal touchpoints, this is a good time to audit the workflow and make the adjustments that give you optimal throughput.