Cyberflight

Background

In 2017 I spent three weeks with Mathias Andersen to design and develop an in-house application to assist prepress artists in the preflighting process.

Preflighting consists of checking design files from outside vendors to ensure accuracy before being sent to the platemaking department.

Automating a tedious but crucial process

Early on at Cyber Graphics I was introduced to flexographic preflight jobs. These small and innocuous tasks were simple and straightforward enough in small batches but tended to be assigned in quantities that could take a single prepress artist the entire day to work through. This same process was then repeated in the platemaking department before individual color layers were turned into plates ready to print product packaging.

This frustration lead to ideations of potential solutions; eventually culminating in an application that could automate repetitive actions and provide additional checks for job accuracy.

Identifing pain points

Highly repetitive process

Jobs are all preflighted the same way; with manual checks to compare information with job records, setting plate and color information, and making multiple server backups of incoming files.

Lots of rules to remember

Each job's folder structure, file names, and ink codes can change based on a variety of factors. Much of this process was simply noted on a laminated notecard at each desk for reference.

Mistakes are costly

Each plate can cost around $10,000 to manufacture. With 4 being the usual minimum for almost all jobs, small mistakes can quickly add up to large costs in materials.

Rapid prototype ideation

With months of first hand experience working within the prepress department I focused on creating quick but functional prototypes to both determine if the application could be built in the allocated timeframe and what features and user flows artists would be the most comfortable with.

This user feedback was invaluable and allowed for quick iterations and adjustments through all steps from early concepts to development.

Effortless info gathering

Cyberflight utilizes production order information to determine file/folder naming schema and ink code values. All of the required information can be imported from a production order XML file.

Import & preflight

Vendor files are easily imported with previews given for each layer and allowing user overrides for edge cases. Any potential issue is alerted beforehand to ensure the preflight is accurate.

Auto measure

Rather than continuing to calculate needed press values by hand, Cyberflight also utlizes the same production order XML file to calculate press measurements automatically.

What difference did we make

Prepress artists spent

50%

less time preflighting

More than

90%

adoption by the end of the year

Saved over

80 hours

of prepress time each month