AI IN PRINT 49 March / April 2025 - Issue 353 www.printmonthly.co.uk key focus. For Piet De Pauw, head of marketing at Enfocus, it is a vital tool for the modern print industry to reduce repetitive tasks and free up time, allowing for workflow steps that may have taken hours to be achieved in mere minutes. “We’re talking about groundbreaking new possibilities in print design across all formats,” De Pauw explains. “By using AI and automation to take care of menial, soul-sucking pre-press tasks like checking for bleed, adding eyelet holes to banner designs, or even just ensuring files end up saved in the right location, you can save hours during every single workday.” Enfocus develops a range of automation software solutions for commercial and wide-format printers. Products include PitStop, a technology which allows print service providers to check incoming PDF files against internal or industry production standards. It also offers its Switch automation solution, which streamlines repetitive tasks to increase workflow throughput and efficiency. Enfocus’ core AI-powered apps are Phoenix and Griffin, which use machine learning to optimise production planning. With Phoenix, print providers can input production specifications such as the machines used, substrates, and hourly costs. The app is then designed to gang jobs and calculate the most cost-effective way of producing the day’s print runs. Griffin uses the same AI but with a focus on wide-format nesting, utilising the inputted data to optimise waste management. De Pauw suggests that the hours these automation solutions free up can be used to revitalise a print business. “As the saying goes, time is money”, he says, “so all that extra time is good for the bottom line too. “It means your creative staff can add extra value to other areas of the business, nurturing leads, maintaining and upgrading equipment, upskilling staff, and taking part in a bit of self-promotion. As all of this boosts business performance, this creates the potential for investment in new print capabilities.” De Pauw uses imposition as an example of a pre-press production step that can be made much easier with AI automation tools, allowing for the automatic arrangement of sheets in the correct order. “One of our software solutions, Phoenix, uses AI to calculate the most cost-effective way of ganging jobs on a single press sheet in seconds”, he says. “Then like a true dynamic duo, Switch, our core automation system, can act as the link between Phoenix and the rest of your workflow. This joins all the dots between your MIS, web-to-print (W2P) or onboarding system, imposition, pre-flighting, and printing. In turn, that turbocharges the print workflow, accomplishing in minutes what previously might take over an hour.” De Pauw stresses that these technologies have not only been developed, but are being widely used and adopted, representing the future landscape of print workflows. “The best part about all this is it’s not some Jetsons-style science fiction future”, he attests. “It’s available here and now, helping printers of all sizes achieve new levels of productivity and profit.” Enfocus’ platform has been developed in collaboration with industry partners and customers, iterating based on feedback from those utilising the software day-today. By connecting separate systems, Enfocus’ goal is to transform production environments into unified automated workflows. ▲ Enfocus’ Switch platform aims to deliver progressive, non-disruptive automation to improve print workflows The UK government ranks in the top five of the Government AI Readiness Index 2024 from Oxford Insights, with an overall index score of 78.87 out of 100 Factoid ▼ Landa’s S11 digital press utilises the PrintAI module to enhance print quality
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