EFI has pursued a strategy of building ecosystems for end-to-end workflows in a variety of market segments, from commercial printing to packaging to textiles. So it is no surprise to see an EFI ecosystem for corrugators begin to emerge with yesterday’s acquisition of Escada Systems, a provider of Corrugator Control Systems for the packaging market. In October of 2015, the company acquired Corrugated Technologies, Inc., (CTI), merging it into its Enterprise Packaging Productivity Suite. As a corrugated-specific ERP solution, CTI includes estimating, EDI order entry, job planning, costing, billing, purchasing, scheduling and more. The acquisition of Escada Systems completes the corrugated workflow.

“Escada Systems basically provides two types of controllers,” explained Nick Benkovich, EFI’s Senior Director of Portfolio Product Management. “The ‘dry’ controller manages the front end where the papers goes in, setting up the manufacturing specifications and controlling moisture, heat etc. At the back end, referred to as ‘wet’ control, the controller manages cutting at pre-set intervals. In addition, Escada offers in-depth reporting and live tracking of roll stock, as well as board testing at the back end for quality, rigidity, squareness of cuts, durability and more. They also have an RFID unit that enables embedding of RFID chips into the corrugate for future tracking purposes.”

Benkovich points out that manufacturers of corrugators such as BHS, Fosber, Marquip and others, have their own wet and dry controllers. But many corrugator plants, as with commercial printing plants and packaging converters, have corrugators from multiple vendors. In those cases, they may prefer to have a common controller interface that works across all of their systems. “Escada provides that universal controller,” Benkovich added, “as well as a number of capabilities that the OEMs’ front ends do not support, including the ability to integrate with other business and production systems.”