TYROLIT

• Sector Industry
• Task Auto­ma­tion of produc­tion order printing
• Top chall­enge Auto­ma­ti­cally sorting engi­nee­ring drawings into job papers when prin­ting from diffe­rent systems with subse­quent stap­ling of printouts
• Solu­tion AKI FAPrint
• Top benefit One single print job combines a job from SAP with PDF docu­ments from the SAP docu­ment manage­ment CA-DMS; indi­vi­dual tray selection(DIN A3/DIN A4) depen­ding on the format; subse­quent bracke­ting of the prin­touts; no more manual sorting neces­sary; signi­fi­cant resource savings

The task

TYROLIT has 580 network prin­ters in use, mainly from Canon and HP. “With take­overs, however, prin­ters from a wide variety of manu­fac­tu­rers are often added; nevert­heless, we try to keep ever­y­thing uniform,” explains Eduard Kohler, IT Global at TYROLIT. Most of the devices are multi­func­tion prin­ters. Until now, all prin­ters were admi­nis­tered indi­vi­du­ally; important func­tion­a­li­ties for effec­tive manage­ment of the printer infra­struc­ture were missing, as was central printer monitoring.

One of the most critical and resource-inten­sive output processes at TYROLIT is the prin­ting of produc­tion orders.

A complete produc­tion order consists of content from various source systems: it consists of the produc­tion docu­ment provided by the SAP system as well as several lists and design drawings from the SAP docu­ment manage­ment CA-DMS. “We print 2,000 to 3,000 such produc­tion orders per day,” Kohler explains. The drawings have very diffe­rent formats – DIN A4 and DIN A3. Previously, employees were tasked with fetching the docu­ments from the various prin­ters, then sorting them by hand into the right places and finally stap­ling the complete produc­tion order. It became parti­cu­larly tricky when prin­ters had problems and the required prin­touts were simply missing – in the SAP system, for example, there was no feed­back whatsoever on what had happened to a print job.

The solution

TYROLIT wanted a new output manage­ment system. The core requi­re­ment was to auto­mate the extre­mely resource-inten­sive sorting of drawings into SAP produc­tion orders as far as possible and at the same time signi­fi­cantly reduce the sources of errors – for example when manu­ally assig­ning lists to drawings. In addi­tion, TYROLIT needed a uniform front end for the users with manage­ment of their own prin­ters and pending lists.

The admi­nis­tra­tors and support staff wanted a clear, intui­tive print manage­ment inter­face for SAP and Office as well as for all other appli­ca­tions. Overall, physical prin­ting was to be ensured and SAP was to be enri­ched with some conve­ni­ence func­tions, such as quali­fied feed­back after a print.

“The biggest chall­enge was to realise the accom­panying print in batch – and not simply in dialogue. Because the latter would be tech­ni­cally very easy to do, but with 2,000 produc­tion orders per day it would be far too time-consuming,” says Kohler. After a market survey, two suppliers were shortlisted.

The Prin­Taurus print manage­ment solu­tion from AKI convinced TYROLIT. “The AKI solu­tion was extre­mely elegant and appealed to us very much – espe­ci­ally because AKI runs on the Windows print servers and not in the SAP system,” explains the IT specia­list. “And overall AKI was also the signi­fi­cantly more flexible and cost-effec­tive option.” TYROLIT now uses Prin­Taurus Commander, Prin­Taurus for ERP, Prin­Taurus Port­Mo­nitor and FAPrint. The support staff are now able to set up, admi­nister and manage prin­ters via a uniform inter­face – comple­tely inde­pen­dent of the opera­ting system.

“But what we like best of all is ‘FAPrint’,” explains Kohler. For the new deve­lo­p­ment of the addi­tional module “FAPrint” by AKI, the manu­fac­tu­rers of the converter soft­ware and the prin­ters were also brought on board. This way, all tech­nical ques­tions could be clari­fied at an early stage and possible sources of error could be excluded. FAPrint creates a single print job and combines back­ground prin­ting from SAP with PDF docu­ments from the SAP docu­ment manage­ment CA-DMS. The employee respon­sible deter­mines the DIN A3/DIN A4 tray selec­tion as well as the stap­ling or uses the stan­dard defaults. If, for example, there is a paper jam or a printer cannot be controlled in the mean­time, it is crucial that prin­ting conti­nues later at the right place so that none of the produc­tion orders is incom­plete. This works perfectly thanks to AKI.

“Ever­y­thing that we used to have to do manu­ally is now done fully auto­ma­ti­cally – that saves a lot of resources,” explains Kohler. And users now also receive quali­fied feed­back on the status of the print job directly – even in the SAP system. “We can also edit print data during the prin­ting process and assign alter­na­tive prin­ters, for example,” says Kohler happily. Every produc­tion job is printed comple­tely and no more print jobs are lost.

IT expert Kohler sums up: “The soft­ware runs excel­lently and the tech­nical exper­tise on the part of the contact persons at AKI is also convin­cing right down the line. You have to speak the same language to be able to trans­late busi­ness requi­re­ments into tech­no­logy. You can see AKI’s solu­tion compe­tence directly in the FAPrint product. FAPrint is an abso­lutely critical and stra­tegic appli­ca­tion for us, with which we have been able to realise signi­fi­cant resource savings.”

The benefits

• Prin­ting from diffe­rent systems is correctly sorted and stapled – in batch mode flaw­less SAP prin­ting with spooling
• Quali­fied feed­back on the status of print jobs from the SAP system
• No more lost printouts
• In case of inter­rup­tions, prin­ting conti­nues at the right place
• Signi­fi­cant resource savings
• Single point of control – central admi­nis­tra­tion of the printer network with intui­tive graphical interface