Digital design takes a large step into the future

“It is Esko’s strategy to digitise and integrate the entire packaging production workflow from design all the way to finished packs and displays in the store,”​ company president Udo Panenka said in a statement.

As an integrated solution, this is aimed more at brand-owners than the supply chain, according to global business development manager John Ellworthy.

Larger and mid-sized businesses​

“There’s been a trend for food and beverage companies to take control of this work-in-progress management, the process and data, and bring it in-house,”​ he said. “The early adopters and fast followers in this area have tended to be the larger and mid-sized businesses.”​

Much of the background technology has been available for a few years, said Ellworthy. “But although a major multinational might have seen the benefit, say, five years ago, necessary investment in servers, training of in-house expertise, and so on, would have represented a significant barrier to implementation,” ​he added.

Work-in-progress management, the online workflow and related design tools increasingly do not stand alone, according to Esko.

Easier ​

“Our WebCenter platform, for instance, may be integrated with up to five other platforms, and one of the most common integrations is with DAM,” ​said Ellworthy. “We realised we could make that process easier.”​

He explained: “Otherwise, you’d need a fair amount of time and cost to integrate the two. But we are also already looking at what we can do in terms of innovation. One of the most obvious areas is in 3D​ [visualisation]. Over the last five or 10 years, our knowledge in this area has grown considerably, and we can introduce this into DAM.”​