Eliminating manual checks with ArtiosCAD Preflight saves Greif up to 15 minutes per design

The Customer

Greif Inc. Cleveland, Ohio, USA

A global leader in industrial packaging products and services, Greif is pursuing its vision to become the world’s best performing customer service company in industrial packaging. Producing everything from steel, plastic and fiber drums, intermediate bulk and reconditioned containers, through to flexible products, containerboard, uncoated and coated recycled paperboard, tubes and cores, Greif is renowned for its diverse mix of specialty products.

The company also manufactures packaging accessories and provides filling, packaging and other services for a wide range of industries, as well as managing timber properties in the Southeastern United States. Greif is strategically positioned with 290 operating locations in 43 countries to serve global, as well as regional, customers.

The challenge

Improving efficiency, reducing errors and downtime

From his base in the Greif Packaging Solutions Center, Senior Designer Alex Salerno collaborates with his structural design colleagues. “I’m a unique user, exclusively preparing the die tooling for manufacturing and working closely with the other packaging designers in my group,” he explained.

“We do a little bit of everything – food & drink packaging, healthcare, automobile parts, flexible packaging on potato chips. You name it. At any given time the structural design team are working on designs that they need to make functional and that’s where Esko ArtiosCAD Preflight comes in! Because whatever design you’re working on, the one thing they all have in common is that you do not want errors in your files.”

Alex explained that there are countless gaps, bugs or issues that can affect design files. “We receive designs in various file formats and sometimes there can be structural variances that do not meet our standards of design integrity,” he said. “I was taught to go through the designs with a fine-toothed comb, so before any file goes to production it’s my job to examine them.”

“Once I have been through the design itself and made sure that I’ve found and fixed all the bugs, the design is then embedded into layouts, die boards, stripping units and blankers. The process means it’s a bit of a manual job to put all those elements together, which can take up valuable time.”

As an existing user of Esko software solutions, Alex said he was introduced to ArtiosCAD Preflight when he upgraded to ArtiosCAD 18.1, which gave him free early access to the newly-launched module.

The solution

A breakthrough innovation for quality control

“Our customers choose us because we are totally customer-focused, to the tenth power,” said Alex. “We are here for our customers 24/7 and I totally believe that our customer service is second to none. Our designers work one-to-one with customers, account handlers and the sales representatives."

“With customer satisfaction of paramount importance, it’s therefore hugely important to us that all our end products are delivered to the highest standards. That’s why this is a perfect tool to have for someone like me!” enthused Alex.

With unrivalled performance in CAD design for packaging and displays, the new Esko ArtiosCAD Preflight software delivers an efficiency boost by saving users up to 15 minutes per design, eliminating the need for manual checks and standardizing design checks across a user group.

“In a typical working year we handle thousands of designs,” Alex said. “Any added tool that can help the design team access ways to ensure 100% accuracy brings potentially huge benefit in terms of resources.”

Developed to boost productivity for packaging structural designers in product development processes, virtual prototyping and die cut manufacturing operations, Esko ArtiosCAD is a trusted tool with more than 23,000 users worldwide. Best in class manufacturing principles based on industry standards, including BOBST ABC guidelines, are validated in ArtiosCAD Preflight to ensure accurate production-ready designs are established, reducing the iterative cycles between design and die making. Each design is checked to ensure it is optimized for faster and more accurate waste removal during die cutting, and potential die cut production issues are now clearly identified earlier in the design phase.

“I was the first to gain access and use the preflight tool,” said Alex. “I didn’t know much about it but gained access when I downloaded the latest version of ArtiosCAD as part of a wider systems update. Almost immediately I could see how the ArtiosCAD Preflight features could help our designers and myself identify more errors than they, or any other programmer, would ordinarily find.”

The benefits

Improved accuracy, greater efficiency

“Esko ArtiosCAD Preflight specifically helps reduce errors in the design files,” Alex commented. “Previously I would have to go through the files, scouring and searching for errors and of course, this is subject to human error. ArtiosCAD Preflight now helps me make files as perfect as they can be for tooling. Preflight is an ‘extra pair of eyes’ on quality.”

Alex said one example of how ArtiosCAD Preflight was making a difference to the Greif design process was when using coating blanket files, based on a coating bleed line. “Sometimes, the bleed lines aren’t connected properly, but in order to find and fix that you might have to do a time-consuming, manual search in high resolution zoom,” said Alex. “You’re just not going to see it with the naked eye. But ArtiosCAD Preflight finds it for you.”

“ArtiosCAD Preflight lets me know the bleed line is malformed and also where to quickly find the error.”

Alex stated that the unique ability to identify and fix these structural design file errors helped save a significant amount of time all along the company's design chain. “If you think about just how many small errors can sometimes occur, and the amount of time it would previously take to make them right, the benefit of ArtiosCAD Preflight is clear.”

“Before I do anything with tooling I now go through a file in fine detail in a fraction of the time. Finding, flagging and then fixing potential design issues at this point saves further time and waste downstream, improving efficiency throughout the entire process. Not only that, but now when I send the finished, updated file, it meets our high design standards. The designers can put it straight in their library, so it saves them even more precious time.”

During 2020, Alex expects that all members of the design team will have the ArtiosCAD 18.1 update and their own access to the ArtiosCAD Preflight module. “I’m hoping they use it as much as I do,” he said. “That will ultimately make my job even easier!”