Konica Minolta’s new software tool, AccurioPro Dashboard, powers the digital experience (DX) of on-demand printing by capturing the shop floor with great detail, enabling its users to reduce downtime as well as costs related to production. AccurioPro Dashboard accurately collects and analyses data to furnish you with key findings that will improve your overall productivity and add intelligence to your print-related business decisions.
In today’s markets that demand printed products faster, cheaper and of higher quality Konica Minolta’s AccurioPro Dashboard is your go-to, by doing more than just digitising and visualising production data. This innovative solution helps you work smarter by enabling you to speed up production-related management decisions, thus increasing your actual production capacity.
‘AccurioPro Dashboard is available in two formats – Essential and Ultimate – allowing you to choose the product version that best suits your specific needs,’ said Edmund Jacobs, Manager: Production Print at Konica Minolta South Africa.
He continued, ‘The AccurioPro Dashboard Essential, is an entry-level solution that will help you leverage your production data from essential production perspectives such as print jobs and print media, while the Ultimate version is a full cloud service that provides an intelligent and simple information platform for reducing print downtime or increasing production capacity.’
AccurioPro Dashboard Essential
AccurioPro Dashboard Essential automatically captures data such as jobs, machine efficiency, consumables usage, waste, production counts and other variables. Another great advantage is it monitors machine activity including uptime and downtime as well as real-time equipment performance, allowing customers to filter the views as they need them, for example to show all jobs with a dedicated media type that have been printed on selected devices.
Via the real-time information tab, the operator can call up productivity related information at any time, such as the number of active devices, the daily print volume in relation to the production hours or information about the prints per minute.
‘Also very important is the actual status including information about how long an actual print run will take until completion. Details like remaining sheets and remaining print time are only some of the values displayed for each device,’ Edmund said.
The Quick Facts tab is a feature that managers will appreciate because it provides a summarised overview about the number of jobs per week, the pages printed in colour as well as in black and white or the number of jobs printed within a selected timeframe.
‘In addition to the summarised views, the operator and production manager can study the detailed tabs for print jobs or productivity. On the Print Jobs tab, users can set a filter for all jobs per device for the job status. They can, for example, review only the completed jobs for all colour devices or set the filter for cancelled jobs to evaluate why a device is not performing as it should. Last but not least, the job list can also be filtered by job type like print job, copy job or adjustment job,’ he explained.
Equally as important is the information displayed on the Print Media tab. At every production site, the calculation and order process for paper is vital because of the huge impact that it has on the cost of the print job. Not only is the availability of paper important but also when to load it in a device, because if paper has to be switched after each job, this will dramatically increase the job preparation time.
‘Displaying the media usage in total, while filtering it device as well as by format, enables users to plan jobs in a more efficient manner. If a media type is selected by the user, the software shows the percentage of this media in production as well as the pages printed on individual devices. Media can also be reviewed by grammage and size to check if, for future jobs, it might make more sense to order more of one paper quality that best suits the requirements and eliminate another more costly media. The operator can also filter by cancelled jobs and see which media has mostly led to paper jams,’ Edmund elaborated.
On the last tab, “Productivity”, the user can review jobs by performance. It goes without saying that a basic job produced without inline finishing will be faster to complete, but for the manager it is sometimes also interesting to review the performance between similar jobs on different devices in order to plan for the future allocation of the right jobs on the most efficient devices.
AccurioPro Dashboard Ultimate
In today’s print environment, a print operation often generates a huge amount of data without providing proper insight. AccurioPro Dashboard Ultimate is the product version for professionals looking for insight into their operations by delivering very detailed reports and enabling them to compare the productivity of consecutive weeks.
‘AccurioPro Dashboard Ultimate gives detailed recommendations on how to improve the uptime of the devices in the print room, while also enabling production managers to see how much time was spent on the user panel, refilling paper or fulfilling other operator tasks.’
AccurioPro Dashboard facilitates the prediction of upcoming production as well as checking whether the print job was completed in the expected time. If production needed longer than expected, the user has tools that can determine why this happened. This allows them to make business decisions from a broader perspective, such as whether production activities or the order situation should be improved.
‘In case of small-lot, multi-variety digital printing, where the volume of work increases and decreases frequently, the machine productivity rate is usually unstable. The attempt should however always be to maximise it so that a higher overall productivity can be achieved when the volume of work is increasing. This application allows checking the productivity rate at a glance,’ Edmund stated.
AccurioPro Dashboard Ultimate allows changing the reference period. This helps to check whether a temporary or long-term change has occurred and to consider temporary or permanent measures in production activities.
He said that operators can check production results such as the number of jobs, the number of output sheets and the number of pages printed in colour and monochrome, as well as the number of machine errors. ‘Checking the important KPIs of production activities is always a good idea – AccurioPro Dashboard Ultimate provides the transparency required to improve these figures,’ he said.
With the job drill-down function, the user can review production results on days when there is a large gap between the expected and the actual printing time. By selecting a specific job, it is possible to drill down into the details of the job and review exactly when the job was printed, on which machine, what the print specifications were, how long it took and which machine operator was involved.
‘This facilitates finding out which factors have the most impact on production efficiency. In addition to this, machine operators in the field can identify the most frequent causes of machine stoppages. This is useful for reviewing daily production activities at the print floor level and can also be viewed by the service engineer when there is a request for maintenance of the machine,’ Edmund explained.
Markets and applications
Various industries will benefit from utilising Konica Minolta’s AccurioPro Dashboard including:
Digital printers:
AccurioPro Dashboard saves time for operators and managers by collecting all job-related data essential for the proper planning of upcoming print jobs. With this solution, the user obtains an easy-to-operate application that provides machine- as well as media-related data, making the manual collection of data a thing of the past.
Cataloguers:
For cataloguers, knowing the exact time required to print a catalogue series is of major importance. Other indispensable production details are included, for instance the amount of paper and staples used for the job, as this allows to calculate the total costs of the job.
Product manufacturers:
For product manufacturers, on-demand printing of labels or instruction manuals is very important. In this context, an overview of the utilisation of the printing systems is essential. AccurioPro Dashboard not only makes the printing process transparent, it also enables operators to determine whether specific output systems need to be included in a production line or whether they can be spared.
Copy shops:
Copy shops are particularly interested in tracking which jobs were printed on which systems to better estimate the costs for power, hardware and media etc. It is especially important in this business area to see which system is printing or in idle mode.
Financial institutions:
These organisations are usually looking to reduce costs with accurate data. Monitoring the overall running costs and tracking consumables usage helps identify potential savings and prepare performance-based cost calculations.
‘Our print room monitoring solution is fast, simple and straightforward, providing the right amount of detail for everyone, from management to machine operators, enabling you to bring data-driven production into your operation. The AccurioPro Dashboard will enhance your competitiveness and boost your business by saving you time, effort and money,’ Edmund concluded.