Designers at Graphic Packaging International Handle More Designs in Less Time with ArtiosCAD Preflight
New ArtiosCAD Preflight functionality enables the design team at Graphic Packaging International to save valuable time on each and every design – leading to significant efficiency improvements and savings.
Graphic Packaging International, Concord, New Hampshire
Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Graphic Packaging International has more than 70 facilities worldwide – and over 50 of those in the Americas . The company’s history spans more than 100 years, during which numerous legacy companies joined forces to create the multi-billion dollar corporation that today employs more than 17,000 colleagues.
Graphic Packaging International’s facility in Concord, New Hampshire, serves as a hub for centralized services, supporting more than 40 plants across the North American continent.
“With our team of designers supporting so many plants, you can understand that the volume of work is very high,” said Elizaveta Roberts, Tactical and Manufacturing Design Senior Manager, Graphic Packaging International (GPI). “Our customers continue to require faster turnaround times and delivery. It is vitally important that our team check every facet of their designs, but the difficulty has been in ensuring that this happens quickly, without compromising on accuracy.”
Manual checks and numerous iterative cycles between design and die making were adding significant time to the whole process, something which, when extrapolated to a business on the scale of GPI, was resulting in a substantial time investment.
“While these checks were vital in terms of optimizing designs for faster and more accurate waste removal during die cutting, as well as identifying potential production issues, we were looking to improve our overall efficiency,” explained Elizaveta. “As a long-term user of Esko solutions, we had discussed this issue with them and were invited to trial their new ArtiosCAD Preflight technology.”
With more than 23,000 users worldwide, ArtiosCAD is the leading structural design software tool, specifically created to boost productivity for packaging structural designers, product development processes, virtual prototyping and die cut manufacturing operations. As a valued Esko customer and early adopter of the latest release of ArtiosCAD (18.1), Graphic Packaging International was among the first to trial this breakthrough innovation for software-assisted quality control checks.
“We got involved when Esko’s developers were still working on creating ArtiosCAD Preflight,” explained Elizaveta. “They came here and spent the day with us, talking about what we’d like to see in the software, what would make our lives easier and which industry-standard specs needed to be included. We installed the new solution and began beta-testing in early 2019.”
With unrivalled performance in CAD design for packaging and displays, the new ArtiosCAD preflight software delivers an even greater efficiency boost by saving users up to 15 minutes per design, eliminating the need for manual checks and standardizing design checks across a user group, vital to a business the scale of Graphic Packaging.
Delivering quality control at the touch of a button, ArtiosCAD Preflight automatically analyzes structural design files and flags quality issues to avoid downstream errors and save time for converters. The software alerts designers to potential design issues before releasing the file to estimating or production, reducing errors and rework and boosting operational uptime and efficiency.
“The benefits were immediate,” said Elizaveta. “First, we were able to identify areas on the design that needed to be re-done and re-checked. Previously, our designers used an offline manual checklist to validate numerous elements, but with the software making everything much more visible, potential for human error is significantly reduced.
“Now when anomalies are identified, a note is attached to the file when it is sent between the structural designer and the manufacturing designer, so they can immediately understand the issue and how it has been resolved,” she said. “This reduces the amount of back-and-forth communication. Since we have designers all over the country, having a simple note on the file design is a huge time-saver.”
ArtiosCAD Preflight has enabled Graphic Packaging International to handle more designs, in less time, with faster turnarounds – which all results in significant savings.
“The fact that our designers can approve more quickly and accurately means we can satisfy our customers’ needs much quicker, and that is hugely important to us,” added Elizaveta.
“We can see a big benefit with the automation and accuracy of the ArtiosCAD Preflight tool as our designers can now utilize its incredibly accurate quality control checks for every facet of the design instead of a manual checklist. The time to manually check a design can take from 5 minutes or even up to an hour on complex designs, so that can really add up depending on how many designs we’re doing in a day,” said Elizaveta.
Due to the overwhelming success of the pre-release trial, Graphic Packaging International is introducing ArtiosCAD Preflight to all of the company’s designers throughout North America.
