The industry is in digital mode and there is a need to change at a rapid pace. Companies require efficiency and systems. The Esko duo, Pankaj Arora and Samarth Chandrashekar, said, “46% of surveyed packaging converters agree that the biggest bottleneck is “unclear design requests”.

Arora said, “50% lead time reduction on packaging creation/update project with half the resource utilisation. Approval cycles are three times faster and the number of revisions is reduced by 60%.”

Arora added, “The current industry trend focuses on increased SKUs and shorter run lengths. This causes bottlenecks in customer service and delay in file approval, which restricts the growth of the organisation.”

The focus of the webinar was Esko’s WebCenter. And how the SaaS-based system is tailored for the packaging graphics industry. Arora explained how the WebCenter manages internal processes and helps deliver right-first-time print, reporting, metrics and process optimisation.

Arora spoke about how WebCenter makes the onboarding of jobs easier. This allows the teams to share and centralise their assets, and be clear about the status at every given point in time.

Esko's WebCenter helps streamline approval and project lifecycles, to eliminate bottlenecks that are associated with the packaging development process.

Chandrashekar walked the delegates through a WebCenter demo of the dashboard.

He crunched some numbers: He said: 66.2% for flexible packaging and 15% for paperboards is the packaging pie in India for 2019; and 67.3% for flexible packaging and 14.6% for paperboards in 2024. 

Chandrashekar said there is a dip in the folding cartons production (as compared to flexible packaging), and that there is much more water required to recycle the same amount of paperboard. With the cost increase, plastic might be a better alternative in the long run 

Sriraam Selvam who was the moderator of the session navigated the delegates through the Q&A session about Esko’s WebCenter. He said, “It is an ideal tool as it covers the full production process and integrates all parts of Esko’s software workflow suite.”

Selvam added, “Using the WebCenter, customers can work online in real-time from anywhere in the world to manipulate CAD and graphic files. Multiple file formats are used to meet the specific requirements of the job and the printing device. Quality controls are built into the online tools that measure dot size, ink separations, angles, traps and dot gain.”