Munich (Germany) – Cimpress, parent of mass customization businesses including Drukwerkdeal, Exaprint and Pixartprinting selected PerfectPattern´s sPrint One technology to maximize the efficiency of its print production within its European Upload & Print portfolio of businesses. The technology is a complementary fit to Cimpress´ Mass Customization Platform (MCP). From a pool of unsorted print orders, sPrint One dynamically calculates a complete print plan, including the print form layouts, in seconds. Utilizing artificial intelligence, it finds the most time- and cost-efficient production schedule and method.

Cimpress, one of the world's leading players in the web-to-print arena, has selected PerfectPattern's sPrint One technology to maximize print production efficiency within its European upload and print portfolio.

In the course of progressing digitization, the printing industry has evolved from a traditional market characterized by large print runs and high margins to a market dominated by online-based customer-specific mass production – with much lower print runs and margins.

As a consequence, online printing processes must be highly efficient and very flexible to successfully map the agile business. Conventional print planning simply hits its limits in this respect – it cannot provide the required dynamics.

Time and cost savings, higher customer satisfaction
“In a mass customization environment such as online printing, flexible yet stable processes and the highest possible degree of automation are essential. To master this challenge, we continuously strive to improve the processes across our network of global businesses by leveraging our Mass Customization Platform (MCP) and complementary technology like sPrintOne,” says Dr. Christian Maas, Vice President Marketing and Technology for Cimpress‘ European upload & print businesses. “With sPrint One, we enable our businesses to exploit latest technologies to optimize their print planning.”

All-new level of production efficiency
“Our sPrint One technology for dynamic print planning in offset and digital printing helps printers to secure and increase their competitiveness. It provides the speed and flexibility needed to thrive in today´s fast-paced print business,” says Fabian Rüchardt, CEO of PerfectPattern. “We are very pleased that Cimpress, one of the most important players in the web-to-print arena, has chosen our technology.”

sPrint One combines sheet optimization with capacity planning. It uses the job data as well as actual production and paper costs to find the most cost-efficient production method. Within seconds, the system calculates a complete time- and cost-optimized print plan from a pool of unsorted print orders. The primary objective of the calculation is to meet the production deadlines for each job, followed by minimizing production costs and materials consumption.

For printing on an industrial level such as online printing, gang forms are an important option in print planning. The ability to combine various print products allows the sPrint One algorithm to dramatically reduce production costs.

sPrint One also makes life easier at printing houses when a machine fails, or an employee is unavailable. Up until now, adapting the latest planning to new requirements has been a time-consuming task. Now printers can simply update the basic data and click to update the planning.

They can also react quickly to unexpected high-priority orders and changes in the priority of orders.