Dashboards are interesting. Everyone has an idea of what they are and what they should show, which can lead to some hilarious conversations as vendors and printers talk past each other. It’s like talking to drivers about the dashboard of their car. Talk to someone who drives an EV, and their concerns are how much mileage they have left before they need to charge the battery in addition to their speed. Talk to a hybrid car owner and they need information on both their battery power and what fuel is left in the tank, plus their speed. The basics!
If they have an upscale model, they may want information on tire pressures. Their dashboard may give them navigation information
However, talk to people who are car afficionados and you get a different perspective. Whether they are running a vintage muscle car, a sporty British roadster, or an F150 pickup they bought last week (not the EV edition), they may want a wider range of data. Not just speed and how much fuel is in the tank, but they may want a tachometer, precise voltage display, and oil pressure, not just lights that comes on if there is a problem.
Expectations matter! To get to all the datapoints a driver expects takes a set of sensors that can feed information to the dashboard display. It takes programming to take the raw data feed and resolve it to what the driver wants to know. Different classes of drivers have different needs. Their mechanics have needs too.
It’s the same in the world of production inkjet. You may be offered dashboard options from more than one of your vendors. Take the time to evaluate what you are being offered in the context of the information the entire team needs. You may find that no single dashboard meets all your needs and trying to force it will hide visibility. Before you decide on a production dashboard, assess and prioritize requirements.
The Need to Know
Sales, onboarding, programming, prepress, print, finishing, and shipping run their departments on different metrics. Some businesses thrive on making comprehensive information available to everyone, but others find “comprehensive” to equal information overload. Talk to the teams to find what they need to know to make the best decisions, but also ask what they want to know so that they have context. Start with these questions:
- What information do you use to make decisions about each job that comes to the department?
- Where does that information originate?
- How often is the information inaccurate?
- How often do you experience delays in job production due to inaccurate information?
This gets you to the starting point. Now look at your current dashboard, or those being offered by your vendors.
- Does the dashboard offer options to program new data points or only presets?
- Can the dashboard look at multiple devices?
- Does the dashboard offer options to see inside the machine – paper jams, ink usage, drying, print speed, nozzle issues, print quality monitoring?
- Does the dashboard show precise values or only the equivalent of “Red, Yellow, Green”?
- Do the vendors offer options for different views for different departments and job roles?
One more question worth asking is how the information is displayed and what devices are supported. Dashboards that come with mobile apps that make it easy to see status on a smart phone are the ideal choice. You want a solution that displays appropriately on the smaller screen so that the information can be seen quickly and accurately.
Whether you have a dashboard today or you are beginning to consider adding dashboards, this is a great time to ask these questions. Indications are that inkjet printing will continue to grow as a percentage of all print. Keeping up with the growing number of jobs, shorter runs, and more diverse finishing requests is better with reliable dashboards!
