Growth in demand for automation software since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic has led print equipment specialist CMYUK to strengthen its Academy team.
Matt Wright has stepped across from his role as a trainer for Kongsberg, Canon, and Mimaki machines to the Academy which provides technical resources for customers at CMYUK’s base in Shrewsbury.
A growing proportion of his time will be concentrated on demonstrating Enfocus and EFI automation software “to help customers achieve greater efficiency and resilience within their production workflows”.
Academy manager Amira Bouchiba said: “We are seeing new and existing customers showing greater awareness and interest in workflow-efficient strategies.
“Covid has been a big driver for this as it spotlighted how reliance on manual physical processes alone could make the difference between a business that survived and one that went under.
“The activities of the CMYUK Academy closely reflect the commercial needs of the marketplace. Matt will be perfect in this new role, helping customers to learn and utilise automation software as an integral profit-booster within their everyday working practices.”
Matt joined CMYUK in August 2020 as an installation and service engineer and has most recently been largely responsible for installing Kongsberg digital cutting tables and training customers in their usage and maintenance.
The need for automation is starting to gain traction within the wide-format digital print sector where CMYUK is focused.
Historically, automation has been the domain of the bigger print companies – particularly Litho – that could make the heavy investment required and, according to CMYUK, the wide-format digital print community has tended to consider automation complex, expensive and only applicable to small-format output.
CMYUK’s offering includes the entry-level EFI Fiery JobFlow, which automates job preparation steps in prepress workflows to produce ready-to-print files, and Enfocus Switch, a workflow automation platform that connects MIS, proofing, web-to-print, PDF pre-flighting, customer approval and production preparation processes.
Amira said: “There is a large need in our industry to automate basic production tenets such as pre-flighting so many businesses aren’t doing this because they don’t understand it.
“EFI JobFlow and Enfocus Switch really dispel the myths around united connectivity. They follow a rules-based model of automation: you decide on your own criteria that activates several actions as soon as a job file is opened.
“Customers can customise workflows and connect with existing ones if needs be. This type of automation really provides significant value-added gains for both wide-format print businesses and their customers.”
