With the shifting market directions of print and packaging procurement and evolution of production equipment and processes, there is a lot to be addressed to satisfy these new requirements and the pain points of the PSP and their customers base. Many of the current “off the shelf” workflow software and professional service offerings are being developed to support newer and disparate technologies and markets. Ultimately, solutions need to fit the specific needs of a PSP and their customer and partner relationships, and that’s where rules-based workflows shine. 

Pipeline workflow solutions come in many forms. The first type would be a predefined pipeline. This type of offering only allows you to choose how the production files are input and how they are output for a fairly well-defined process, like constrained design. Web-to-print catalog ordering and on-demand book production are examples. The second type is a linear pipeline. This type of solution provides flexibility in how you build the process to support your requirements, but without an intelligent “rules-based” infrastructure. In this case, you will need to have individual predefined workflows to address each of your production variables. Finally, the third type is a rules-based pipeline solution. The main advantage to rules-based pipeline systems is that you can minimize the number of workflows you need to define as well as the amount of potential operator intervention that is required. In essence, the system can be programmed to make its own intelligent choices. Experience shows that the advantages received from implementation of rules-based pipeline workflows have an ROI of about six months!

While many or most of the workflow solutions today support pipeline processing, in this article I will focus on those with rules-based pipelines. These rules-based solutions are designed with a higher level of built-in intelligence to support the automation of a wider range of applications, going beyond the production of templated products and pages, and addressing the variability of day-to-day production. Many solutions today use the rules-based pipeline automation model. This type of system supports the use of tasks, triggers, actions, and filters that can be configured through a rules-based engine, providing an almost endless variability and control of processes. The availability of pipeline automation systems that support print and marketing service providers has been growing. Those who have implemented these types of systems have achieved significant benefits in reducing production time and costs. Rules-based workflow solutions can be developed and supported by hardware manufacturers or agnostic in that they are more flexible in working in with disparate systems. It is important to note that some of the rules-based solutions developed by hardware manufacturers can be compatible with third-party systems as well, but as you research the options, you need to be specific in your requirements. While I can’t possibly cover all of the solutions that are out there, the following examples are targeted at print and packaging production and fairly representative of the landscape as a whole.