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Tajima Software Administrator Posts: 488
1/20/2015
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Trending Toward Personalization and Automation
By: Claude Vlandis, Senior Vice President of Business Development
The garment decoration industry is in a period of rapid technological innovation. Organizations are quickly adopting new technologies and business practices to help with productivity and profitability. One such change is the movement toward garment personalization and the automation of this process. It is becoming more and more difficult for digital print and embroidery businesses to remain competitive without offering a mass personalization solution to their customer base.
Personalization is a segment of the business that provides a very high profit margin. The automation process builds on this, allowing you to keep costs low while maximizing productivity. Together, personalization and automation are making a large impact across both the digital print and embroidery worlds.
The personalization process is very straightforward. Your customer creates their design from scratch or based on a defined template. They can add their name, initials or a personalized message to the garment. A personalization solution gives the customer the opportunity to see a rendering of the design and check for any mistakes before approving it and submitting for production. Once submitted, your ordering system will receive the design and your operator will be able to send it to the machine for production. Personalization is great for building a customer base in sports teams, clubs, and events because a single template can serve as the basis for hundreds of designs.
There are several businesses that have already followed the industry trend toward personalizing garments. This is a great step in the right direction but the full potential of their business is not realized until an automation solution is implemented. Automation will improve efficiency, consistency, and profitability in any area of apparel personalization.
Automation solutions will seamlessly integrate into your current production processes, no matter how large or small your apparel decoration business is. An automation solution will save you time and labor costs, improving delivery times and eliminating costly errors associated with manual input.
It is important for an automation solution be tailored specifically to your organization’s needs and strengths. Designs can be created automatically according to your company's guidelines and text generation rules, and can be automatically downloaded to your production machines. The automation process runs through a text and design creation engine that generates designs based on orders created online, or on in-house. This part of the process is completed without any user intervention.
The automation process will allow you to maximize the efficiency of your business and your employees. It frees you from tedious tasks such as order processing and manual entry, creating more time for you to focus on other aspects of the business.
With digital print automation, Variable Data improves productivity by reducing the time it takes to create multiple personalizations that are similar in appearance. The design process only has to be completed once and you can print many personalized items.
As for embroidery, new personalization solutions are able to provide 3D renderings of designs before they are approved for production. Embroidery files are generated automatically from the order information and by consulting your own product-specific parameters such as the size of the design and font selection. The entire process becomes streamlined.
Automation will help your bottom line in several ways. For one, it eliminates production errors, thus eliminating the cost of lost products and unhappy customers. With an automated solution in place there’s no need to worry about spelling errors, spacing issues or crude language appearing in any of your designs.
Automating your business maximizes the productivity of your employees. Your machine operators will be able to manage multiple machines simultaneously. Instead of an operator taking the design manually from the order and inputting to the machine, the process is now as simple as scanning a barcode and readying the garment for production.
Companies that have implemented both personalization and automation are sure to see a boom in businesses. When a company experiences this type of phenomenal growth, it must have the equipment and systems in place to keep up with demand. A great automation solution is one that is streamlined, allowing your organization to increase the rate at which orders can be handled and processed. This will allow you to scale up your business, meaning the automation solution will grow alongside the organization.
When you are ready to automate your business, it is important to look toward an organization with experience and a reputation for quality. Pulse’s powerful automation software solutions will seamlessly integrate into your current infrastructure. Pulse automation handles the production process from order entry through to design production. Eliminate all manual production tasks and errors that cost your business lost time and revenue each day. Automation solutions are available for all forms of embellishment including embroidery, digital print, laser, appliqué, rhinestone, sequin and engraving.
If you are ready to automate your apparel decoration business or are curious to learn more, please contact your local Pulse Microsystems distributor or visit www.pulsemicro.com.
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