Gent (Belgium), – PMP Digital, a leading specialist in digital premedia services for the Australian folding carton packaging market, has recently invested in a raft of EskoArtwork solutions including 3D design, prepress, workflow automation and online collaboration tools.

Together, these tools help streamline and integrate the end-to-end workflow, create efficiencies and enable PMP Digital's clients to get their products to market quicker, with higher consistent quality and with reduced costs.

PMP Digital is part of PMP Limited, the largest web printing company in Australia employing over 2500 people. The company has a long history in printing, with its first press office being established in Melbourne in 1858. PMP Digital has always been at the forefront of new premedia production techniques, leveraging the finest technology and the best people to deliver customer-focused solutions for their clients that generate better business outcomes.

"We focus on the points of pain of our customers. We look at the end-to-end process and develop solutions to address these pressure points. Resource planning, for example, is an extremely important task and visibility plays a key role," says Justin Davies, National Manager, at PMP Digital. "EskoArtwork's online collaboration tool, WebCenter, enables us to join all parties in the workflow together, so everyone has complete visibility ­– upstream and downstream. This sharing of knowledge enables smart planning. If people can see what's going to happen, they can optimize their stock levels. File transfers and approval processes are also simplified – making life much easier for the client."

Alongside WebCenter, PMP Digital also invested in a number of EskoArtwork's prepress tools including DeskPack and Plato – both of which will be fully integrated in Automation Engine, EskoArtwork's workflow solution. These products allow the company to streamline its operations and to make efficiency gains throughout the end-to-end workflow.

"We use technology to streamline the entire workflow and automate many of the mundane tasks. This creates efficiencies and takes time and cost out of the process. These savings are passed onto the customer, but the real advantages actually come when we build these efficiencies into a value proposition for the customer," continues Davies. "EskoArtwork's 3D Studio, for example, will enable our designers to work in a 3D environment. But it's also a valuable quality assurance tool which we will use to pick up errors and potential issues during the early stages of the design. This also saves considerable time and waste down the track. A consistent level of quality is delivered in the shortest amount of time enabling new products to be taken to market faster with a higher, more consistent level of quality."

EskoArtwork's 3D design tools, such as Visualizer, Studio and Dynamic Content also provide PMP Digital with the opportunity to work closer with brand owners on structural designs. Creative packaging ideas can be shared with clients early in the process enabling ideas and feedback to flow quickly back and forth. Virtual mock-ups can also be communicated the same way saving both time and the costs of expensive physical prototypes.

The investment in EskoArtwork's software tools will not only create more business opportunities for PMP Digital in the carton folding market. The company also plans to leverage the technology to expand into the flexo packaging market in the near future.

The EskoArtwork products purchased by PMP Digital include:

• ArtiosCAD - structural design software for packaging design with dedicated tools specifically designed for packaging professionals for structural design, product development, virtual prototyping and manufacturing.
• Studio - a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator that brings interactive 3D packaging design to life.
• Visualizer - creates realistic digital mock-ups including print effects such as embossing, hotfoil, metalized inks and different substrates.
• Dynamic Content for Adobe Illustrator - links an Adobe Illustrator CS text object directly to a source created by the information owner, and separates it from the design.
• DeskPack - developed to support Adobe Illustrator CS and Adobe Photoshop CS, this enhances creativity and increases productivity of designers.
• Automation Engine - advanced workflow automation and process management system
• Plato - powerful tool for the creation of print-ready layouts for the packaging and label industries.
• WebCenter - a 24 / 7 global communication, secure internet-based view and approval service that allows information to be stored centrally and shared globally