Tompla successfully automates cross-border order production process with Gradual PowerSWITCH
New software ensures precision and reliability for high volume production
Tompla, Europe’s Nº1 envelope manufacturer, was founded in Madrid in 1961. Over the years, the company has grown in size, position and strength to become Europe's top producer of envelopes. Today Tompla boasts a daily output of over 17 million envelopes to an international client-base of well over 11,000 clients. The company has close to 1,000 employees, 26 sales offices, 9 manufacturing plants and 6 overprinting plants located in Spain, the UK and France.
Julio Prieto, the Marketing and Communication Manager at Tompla, comments: “We are a very flexible and responsive company, and it was essential to have a flexible tool that could address our daily planning challenges – which tend to be very complex. We run many processes that require optimising, and all our departments must work in synchronization in order to handle the 15,000+ orders that we receive during the course of the year."
Tompla’s Spanish production facilities alone cover an area of 42,000 square meters and are equipped with offset and flexo print processing equipment for a production process that is fully certified to ISO standards.
The challenge: intelligent cross-border workflow integration
Tompla’s demand was very specific: a solution that would eliminate mistakes in the order-production process, starting from the initial order, through production to final delivery. Furthermore the tool had to offer the necessary flexibility, real-time tracking and diagnostic capabilities and it had to be implemented at various plants across Europe. The solution also had to be compatible with Tompla's existing software and adapt to the way they worked, which typically entails an average of 60 production changeovers per day.
The PowerSWITCH solution
Gradual Software’s PowerSWITCH advanced automation solution proved to be the ideal match for Tompla's demanding production requirements.
As the workhorse of the SWITCH product family, PowerSWITCH’s comprehensive scripting and metadata tools enable the user to build a smarter and more advanced workflow that integrates seamlessly with third-party technology. The workgroup client (SWITCHclient) bundled with PowerSWITCH allows team members to submit and track jobs from their own workstation. The flexible scripting capabilities of PowerSWITCH support the development of custom tools to control third-party applications that aren't supported out of the box, to integrate with a DAM or MIS system, or to interact with a proprietary solution that is already running in the company.
PowerSWITCH has enabled Tompla to easily and effectively automate routine tasks such as certifying inbound PDFs, expanding the existing tools on their intranet, and to create high or low resolution PDFs, depending on production requirements. PowerSWITCH also enabled Tompla to achieve a high level of reliability, security and integration across its multiple locations, which include 20 sales offices and several graphics service units, enabling the company to keep in close touch with its offices throughout Europe, quickly and effectively.
Saving time, saving money.
Until recently, many parts of Tompla’s production process were done manually, and that meant wasted time, particularly since real-time data was not available. With PowerSWITCH the exact status of the graphics process can be tracked at all times. Working in real time means the company is no longer in the dark until the order reaches the factory.
Quick response time is vital for Tompla’s clients: being able to tell them almost immediately after the job comes in whether everything is in order saves a lot of time later in the production process. This gives Tompla a clear competitive advantage in an age where there is so much emphasis on faster delivery times. With PowerSWITCH, problems are spotted immediately, and everything is clearly identified at all times.
Agustin Gutiérrez, Head of Graphics Services at Tompla says: “We all work using this tool, and that means that the same criteria are applied throughout the entire production process. PowerSWITCH has dramatically increased the accuracy of troubleshooting problems. When the notification that something is correct or incorrect comes from a tool rather than a person, it is much more reliable since it does not depend on subjective factors. This is of paramount importance when dealing with people in diverse countries who have different ways of working.“
The ultimate intelligent workflow
PowerSWITCH also provides advanced automation properties such as scripting and metadata support. Thanks to the solution’s comprehensive scripting and metadata tools, users can create a more intelligent and efficient workflow that integrates perfectly with third-party applications and systems. Scripting languages can provide more intelligent automation through extending the processing of files based on the metadata increasingly being stored with documents these days.
By using PowerSWITCH’s scripting properties, tasks not programmed in the third-party software can easily be implemented. To assist users, PowerSWITCH has made a full-featured API (application programming interface) available for the three scripting languages supported. The API presents the functional elements of PowerSWITCH for those scripts, and also encapsulates common tasks, thereby facilitating script reading.
Improved communication with SWITCHclient
One of Tompla’s longstanding requirements, to improve communication with its clients, has been realized thanks to SWITCHclient, a workgroup client within PowerSWITCH that facilitates the use of the automation solution by entire workgroups.
SWITCHclient is a freestanding application, not a web-based client, and can be installed within a workgroup’s workstations with adjustable access for the users and groups set up in PowerSWITCH. SWITCHclient enables anyone in the local network to send assignments, inspect the current status, and to intervene if the assignments are at a standstill. The workflow administrator can set specific access rights and supervise the flow of all assignments. PowerSWITCH’s activity records can also be accessed through the workgroup client. SWITCHclient also creates a record of each intervention, thus also significantly boosting security.
Flexible tool for future growth
PowerSWITCH has proven its worth at Tompla. “After the initial configuration, working with PowerSWITCH is very transparent and easy for the operators,” states César Zúñiga. “The key advantage for us is that PowerSWITCH integrates everything related to PDFs, which is the file format the entire company works with, even though we are working with different countries using different software.”
Agustín Gutiérrez is convinced that PowerSWITCH was the right technology investment for Tompla. “When we made the decision to acquire an automation solution, we researched what the market had to offer, and everything out there looked like homespun solutions - with the exception of PowerSWITCH. Only PowerSWITCH provided the assurance that all of our present and future requirements would be met. Now that the new version is up and running, we are convinced that it is a very powerful tool, and we are sure that it is the answer to all our needs.”
PowerSWITCH will play an important role in Tompla’s plan to create a new packaging division. This growth strategy, planned for the near future, will enable Tompla to meet the packaging, packing and presentation requirements of its clients.
Credits
This testimonial was created in collaboration with Gradual Software's Spanish distributor EPS (www.eps.se).
PDF version
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