Print manufacturing is a make-to-order process; it converts customers' print demands into shipped print products such as books, calendars, and stationeries. Its service level objectives are usually dominated by the on-time delivery constraint. Given the existing resource makeup, the business objective of the print service providers is to drive up the throughput to dilute the fixed cost and maximize the profit while guarantees the quality of service.The print manufacturing process outlined above, in particular on-demand digital print, cannot be simply treated as a standard manufacturing activity. The highly variable and dynamic nature of the job mix combined with personalized customer requirements results in numerous combinations of factory configuration and business philosophy. This has been identified as a key reason that hinders the print productivity growth. In this paper we report our recent development of a simulation platform of digital print manufacturing operations adopting an open-source electronic design automation tool, and shed light into paths towards implementing a lean print manufacturing paradigm.
Jun Zeng, Eric Hoarau, I-Jong Lin, Gary Dispoto, Ming Hao, "Lean print manufacturing: operations simulation and analysis of digital printer" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP26), 2010, pp 372 - 375, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2010.26.1.art00001_2