WILMINGTON, MA -- Prism’s WIN 2009 is the culmination of years of development, innovation, and customer feedback to create a breakthrough management information system for the graphic arts industry. WIN 2009 now enables the power of Metrix production planning software for automated layout creation plus the ability to gang multiple jobs together in one layout. The combination of Metrix and ganging provides companies with unique production cost saving abilities that previously could only be accomplished with manual procedures. Ganged jobs are automatically optimized on one or more layouts and seamlessly passed to production operators. For production employees, they work on ganged jobs just as they would individual jobs. And job costs are automatically calculated individually by job for accurate costing and invoicing. WIN 2009 also contains significant advancements in Key Performance Indicator (KPI) dashboards and shop floor data capture. WIN 2009 will be featured at Print 09 in Chicago, September 11-16, at booth 6563.

Metrix Job Planning

WIN 2009 now enables the power of Metrix production planning software for automated layout creation of all sheetfed and flatwork. With one click from a quote or job, Metrix will optimize sheet size and maximize number up for the desired production process.

Job Ganging

To reduce costs, jobs with similar characteristics can sometimes be combined on the same layout. Job ganging combines processes that can be worked on at the same time, printing, for example, while maintaining individual processes for other operations, finishing, for example. WIN 2009 will distribute job costs for ganged processes to the individual jobs while keeping individual process costs distinct to each job.
 
New Virtual Time Manager
 
The WIN 2009 Virtual Time Manager 2 (VTM2) is a client-based application used for recording operator activity either on the shop floor or during preproduction and is an enhanced version of the original Prism WIN VTM. VTM2 is configurable in appearance and behavior and can receive feedback manually from operators or through an available machine counter. VTM2 is appropriate as a thin client, touch screen, or traditional PC.
 
Key Performance Indicator Dashboard
KPI Dashboard is a new Prism product that enables browser-based access to key performance indicator (KPI) information provided by a Prism WIN installation. KPI Dashboard consists of a number of pages, each containing a number of widgets. A Prism WIN operator with an assigned role can access some or all of these pages and widgets. Each widget is a configurable graphical display of specific KPI information retrieved from Prism WIN. Widgets can be added, removed, moved and renamed. Source data for a widget can be displayed by drilling down on the widget. Additional information can be displayed by placing the mouse pointer over the widget (hovering). For example, hovering over the Quote Conversion Rate opens a hover window showing the actual number of quotes raised and the actual number of quotes converted.