Latest / Beyond the press / Beyond the press - EP 01 - Automation With Ray Duval
Transcript
- Julie Watson: Alright, so welcome to our new podcast called Beyond the Press. Thank you for joining Beyond the Press, Ray Duval: Mm-hmm. Julie Watson: a podcast about AI, automation, technology, and the future of manufacturing. I'm your host, Julie Watson, CEO of Ultimate Tech, and each episode features candid conversations with industry leaders, innovators, customers, and partners. We explore the people, ideas, and technologies shaping print and manufacturing. In this episode, we are here speaking with Ray Duval, automation specialist at Ultimate Tech. Ray has been helping customers understand the values of automation and facilitate their projects for over 20 years. So Ray, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the printing industry? Ray Duval: Well, thank you, Julie, and glad to be invitee number one on Beyond the Press. I think it's gonna be a great series for everyone. So as you said, been with Ultimate Tech for twenty one years now. can't think of any project that has not been around automation even since day one. and I've been in the printing industry a little bit before that. I've been also in in other industries as well, mostly high technology. although I did I did a few years where we were putting ink on wood. manufacturing wood flooring with with pigmented colors and special inks and and that was a lot of fun. So almost printing but not quite. And and myself, you know, I've I love technology, I love customers, I love working with people around the world. So every day is is pure joy for me. Julie Watson: Yeah, and a a little secret, I'm sure, is that you also know the ins and outs of karaoke machines, right? Ray Duval: That's funny. Not many people know this in our industry. Actually, there's a few people in the industry that now know, like Morton from Inkish with all the interviews that you did of us at Ultimate Tech knows. Yes, I was, I have to admit, I was in the karaoke business. and and yeah, I I loved that that the number of years that I was in there. I visited cruise lines, army bases around the world and people just enjoying themselves singing on karaoke machines. Julie Watson: Well, we're not gonna ask you to sing today, but my next question would then be from all your experience in your last twenty plus years, what are the the conversations about automation that still surprise you today? I mean, because you'd think twenty plus years of talking about automation, Ray Duval: Yeah. Julie Watson: you would have seen it or heard it all, but maybe you're still having conversations that surprise you today. Ray Duval: Yeah. it's it's it's amazing with everything that not just in our industry in the printing industry but across the board, people that are daily in their personal lives, their professional lives in front of technology, in front of automation, in front of, if we wanna stay in the current days flying cars and just proof that that technology is is, you know, getting better and better and there's new things happening. But still I have conversations with with commercial printers that are using software A or software B with two or twenty people doing stuff manually That could be automated and across the board, you know, it i it is design of material, it is database merging of of you know different components that will go into a printing piece. It is the actual creation of what will get printed, how do you place it, and then you push that downstream for manufacturing, you know, manual setups of equipment that could be automated and all those touch points that are stale related to one thing that. yet we have to overcome and that is the human component of the equation. How do we deal with with us the humans in the midst of all this using software workflow machines? Julie Watson: So you mean change management, right? Ray Duval: Yeah, exactly. Change perspectives. it's a good point that you're saying management. I think it it it it it it is a starting in a central point management in terms of empowering empowering the organization in in orchestrate the the growth, the future path with automation and making sure that humans understand where the organization is going. what their role will be as as human, any human when it comes to change will will have, you know, a different perspective and definitely management is the central point to to have adoption going into have easier, faster implementation and of course ROI for the benefit of everybody. Julie Watson: Yeah, you're talking about change management, but I could also talk about training. because whenever you're implementing new technologies, I think that's also a very important point, right? Not everybody will learn how to use it from from one day to the next and how to plan for, training the teams ongoing as well. But where do you see the greatest opportunities in automation today? from talking to various customers on a daily basis. Ray Duval: It is still very broad. it really depends where the customers I talk to are are, segmented in in the printing industry. Are they doing transactional and mailing jobs? So their pain points could be upstream in the workflow, where composition happens, where managing the database happens, where quality of the files they they generate or receive from from their customers are. or if you talk to a wide format, large format print operation where, you know, it it is about all the manual touch point that they create job to job, specifically for that job, that customer. It it varies all over the place, but the common denominator is is the manual touch points that can be automated and and you know, it's for some customers, unfortunately, it's not under a radar. It's it's like something that they still view as very, very far. And unfortun unfortunately for some, when when they realize it, it it's late in in the business process, which can be dangerous, right? Julie Watson: Right, right. Can and can you give us some some recent use cases where, you know, a customer was doing work manually and they started implementing some software and what kind of return did they get from this? Ray Duval: Well, I I'll touch on that, but one important point that you mentioned about about training, I call this double tease. Transformation transformational training, which is basically how you transform the perspective of your of your team, right? About automation, how they will get involved into the transformation of your business and through training they will see, th th their role changing, of course, but they'll see their role will definitely be part of this transformation and training will just boost their confidence towards being able to adapt to this transition, another T, towards, you know, having a more automated environment and then see their their their business, their their operation grow. And and this has been in recent weeks, I've seen two different cases that really st you know were stunning to me. The first one was a white format operation. I'm not gonna mention names or countries, I'll give this a very broad answer, but they were doing everything in in different pieces of software manually to design pieces to actually place them on the media that they're printing it on and this customer has role in in flatbed printing as well as of course cutting equipment. But everything was manual. And I'm not gonna mention the software, but you can imagine if you're in the wide format, large format business, what kind of software your people are using every day, manually spending minutes, if not hours, to do this. And this customer was exactly where I mentioned a few minutes ago at the edge of like we're gonna be in trouble. And they adopted our hot folder. automation approach where with rules they do the same thing today for the majority of their work yard signs signage for for windows that are you know special cuts for different chain stores they work with and other applications like car wrapping and the majority of their work is generated automatically for the printing file in the cutting operation this by itself allowed them to grow They have not let go anyone. They're actually getting more people on board because they're doing more jobs. Their volume of jobs increased. And that's over a span of a like a zero, three month period. so it's easy, as you said, with with you know, with the the empowering your people to transform the business operation, provide proper training to your to your team, and then see immediately. that you can grow, that you can accept now business that you would have refused in the past. And that was this customer case, which we're replicating with with with other customers. And the other example is is purely someone that has grown with us over the years. But more recently they went from like completely manual operation with offset printing, digital printing, somewhere in Europe, a var a fairly large print operation. And rule-based automation for them for generating print files, grouping files, batching files, was a major milestone for them. But the the other major milestone in recent months was transforming all of that with a completely data-driven workflow using XML. So XML is is common. You you can get you know tech resources fairly anywhere in the world that will understand the structure of XML. And then they're pushing now. From from job creation to job completion, everything with with a data-driven workflow and XML. And that again opens the door for growth, for additional business. And it's really transforming the approach. I I love to use these words. it goes from not saying they're good guys or bad guys, but it transforms from Gutenberg to like a Steve Jobs, Bill Gates type of approach where The the second one is totally data driven and bandwidth and automation and how can I get everything faster, better and and this is this is what I live for every day, helping customers d achieving this at at any steps possible, small steps or hot folder driven approach where you can envision you know growing with with faster, better technology. Which is, going to a data driven workflow, which is, you know, the the ultimate, no pun intended, kind of workflow to drive your print business. Julie Watson: And it's interesting because in your examples, the automation did not necessarily go against jobs, for example. Because we often hear that automation Ray Duval: Mm-hmm. Julie Watson: will take away jobs, but in these cases, they didn't. They just allowed them to produce more with what they had and grow, or even you know, focus more time on quality or creative tasks instead of you know repetitive tasks. So I think that's that's really interesting. And in this conversation and the topic of our of our podcast is beyond the press. But in having this conversation, what does beyond the press mean to mean for you? Ray Duval: money? That's the that's what everybody wants, right? That if you're working in the print shop, you want the business to be successful as an employee, and obviously that will mean that that you're getting paid, that you're you have raises, that you that you see more people that are being hired. as a business owner, it's about seeing more jobs getting printed, seeing your equipment busy all the time, hearing those sounds in production where you know. You're you're making money because machines are printing, machines are binding, stitching, cutting paper. And at the end of the day, if you're more and more automated, you're gonna be more and more profitable because less touch points means faster production, faster SLAs, more customers, more orders that can be produced. And that inevitably translates for mostly everybody, higher profits. Julie Watson: That means so so focusing not just on the press. The press is important. The quality of the the the the press and the impressions are important, the color is important, but beyond that, the workflow can drive more more revenues, right? So in in all Ray Duval: Yeah, exactly. Julie Watson: your your customer conversations that you've been having these days, are there a lot of questions about AI? I mean, it feels like everybody's talking about AI these days. Ray Duval: Yeah, I I would say there's two folds. There's those that are AI fatigued. It's it's like too much, too much over the the all over the place. And there's the others that are actually experiencing with AI. either you know, to help w with the redaction of of some stuff, to help searching for information, they fast they they they they see faster access to to results when they research something. And then there's a fine number of customers that have a strategy to implement that in their business. Whether it's from their storefront operation where they generate orders, where they have things that will improve the quality of of files with AI based technology. Like for example, we've seen some bleed technology out there, some in the photo business image enhancing technologies that really are there to get more orders, to get the consumer that orders these printed products an enjoyable experience. And I think the adoption of this is just gonna be more and more in in our industry, not just from the creation of pictures, enhancement of images, creation of of of materials to get printed But also in terms of automation, in terms of predictive orders, in terms of helping for example, B2B environments to know in advance based on on data what will get ordered and most likely when, and then in production itself, help with the automation by creating around data how a job or what type of job should be manufactured this way. and at some point that will again enhance those that have adopted technologies like this to print more, get more jobs and and grow. Julie Watson: So you're going to the flow event this coming November and this event is about technology, AI, and robotics. But ultimately, what are you hoping to accomplish there? Ray Duval: a lot of things. I will say, have discussions around centralization and orchestration of all of this. You mentioned that, you know, robotics. we have customers in Canada and America, all over the world that have robots now in their print operations, either to mostly carry paper, so move paper from one device to another device, or to to take some like book blocks and move them to another piece of equipment or stack it to a palette, right? and then software before that. How do you get the print file to be generated automatically, printed automatically, and then push that to the binding equipment that will have the instruction to finish all this. So we're at the center of all of this. We're in this at the center of the print, bindery, robotics, and it's it's it's going to be the discussions with customers and with partners. flow is gonna be focused wholly on software, as you said in and robotics and the discussions also with partners will be equally interesting. and what will come out of it will definitely be impacting some print business, not just in Germany, because flow is in Germany, but all over Europe and we'll bring that back home and share what we have experienced there with with our customers. Julie Watson: Well, I definitely look forward for for that feedback. And it I think it's so great to have a an event focused on technology, especially in the print industry, because that's that's the future. But you know, to my favorite question that I'm gonna ask here today is imagine it's 2035. What is the one prediction about print manufacturing in technology or AI that everybody thinks is impossible today, but will be commonplace? I mean, 2035 is think about it, 10 years from now. Ray Duval: Yeah. Or not even. Maybe it's nine ninety years and some months. Julie Watson: Or not even or yeah, maybe twenty thirty six. There you go. Ray Duval: Ha ha ha. Julie Watson: To be more precise. Ray Duval: Well my personal take on it is there will be a lower number of print operations worldwide. But these print operations, some of them, not all of them, but some of them will be much bigger organizations. They will definitely have robotics automation predictive you know, prediction. will be a word that is widely used towards those those years in nine years and some months from now. So print operations will be less dependent on a per job approach, as I would say, and would be more focused on the customers they work with and know in advance what they'll need. Predict what will be incoming and the exchange of I'll call it data. not files or PDFs or jobs, but the exchange of data will also be automated. So there will be a lot less intervention. I think the the department the departments like CSRs and in, everything pre press will of have transformed into complete automation. data will get to presses and people will be more into actual customer relationships. I think it's it's still gonna be nine years from now, humans to humans. So I think the customer relationship management will be a lot more important than it is today. And all the rest will be by I don't know, fivefold, tenfold, a hundredfold more automated. Julie Watson: An interesting perspective for 2035. definitely for a perspective for the future, but knowing how fast time goes, that nine years is actually sooner because believe it or not, Drupa's just around the corner, right? Drupa's 2028. Ray Duval: Yeah. Yeah. Julie Watson: And I know that we've been working on a lot of things look leading up to Drupal, so definitely looking forward for that. But thank you so much for joining this first episode of Beyond the Press, and to be honest, helping me practice. Ray Duval: Ha ha ha. Julie Watson: If you want to hear more and continue the conversation, follow us and subscribe because we're gonna have lots of content and lots of great guests and definitely talking about everything on how to make the printing process as efficient as possible. So thank you very much.