Value Stream Mapping: A True Efficiency Tool for Flexographic Printers

Logic holds, “Nobody can predict the future!” I won’t claim I can, however I will ask, “Is predicting the future of our packaging industry really that difficult?”

Let’s analyze what we know. The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to adapt and change. Many of those changes are here to stay. These include:

• Virtual meetings and remote work: People had to adapt to work remotely during isolation, and even though they wanted to go back to the office, they also discovered that having the flexibility that remote work offers is a good thing. Many now don’t want to have jobs that force them to commute every day. This already is creating a big challenge to hire and retain talent
• Digitalization of tasks and automation: Almost every industry needed to accelerate the adoption of digitalization and automation. We widely found that there is a big opportunity in taking this direction, and for now it is the only answer to the people-problem
• E-commerce adoption: During the pandemic, it charted 50 percent faster than before. This changed the way we buy things, and we are not going back

On the other hand, in the world we are living today, we know that we currently face and most likely will continue facing:

• Supply chain disruption: This problem has a lot of contributing factors, ranging from natural disasters, to wars or price increases. It is producing and will continue producing an increase of demand and/or a disruption for a period of time
• Digital transformation: We know that it is not a phase; everything will continue becoming more digital. This is not something that we see in a science fiction movie—This is our real life. Anyone 40 years old, or older, can give living testimony of this. It will continue moving in this direction
• Environment and circular economy: We’ve been talking about this topic for a long time. I do remember back in the 1990s, we used to put the “something related to the environment” in the last slide of every presentation—We were not really serious about real changes yet. However, in the next five to 10 years we will see a big transformation in the industry, because the problem is real and it is long term. Consumers now are asking for action, and governments will have to give answers

In other words, and without pretending to be a fortune-teller, we can deduce that the way we’ve been working so far won’t take us to the next stage unless we adapt and implement new ways of doing business.

And those new practices (Figure 1) should keep these priorities in mind:

• Accelerate digital transformation for the entire business
• Develop a strategy around environment sustainability
• Acquire, retain and develop talent

Value Stream Mapping

Every time I talk about this, the first reaction is, “OK, I get it, but how do I start?”

My answer is, start with a value stream map (Figure 2) workflow. Bring together stakeholders of all departments and work to identify various types of waste in the process. Call your vendors to help you with the technological innovations that will let you improve your process.

You need to think behind departments and functions, looking for any area that can offer an opportunity to digitalize or automate a process. In particular, examine tasks that require a person to do the same thing repeatedly, those tasks that are not adding value to the process but open an opportunity to disrupt the process or generate a mistake. This is your low-hanging fruit and should be considered first.

For example, consider the flexographic plate making process (Figure 3). Did you know that to make a photopolymer plate, you need 14 human touchpoints that represent 29 minutes of real time and can be automated to leave just three touchpoints (as seen in Figure 4)?

What we are proposing to the industry is based on accelerating the digital transformation for your entire business. We had analyzed, for example, how many errors make it to the shelf. Errors result in selling the product at a reduced price or even a full reclaim of the entire product. Errors that go from technical drawings, artwork designs, legal and texts, technical specifications, and prepress are charted by percent of occurrence in Figure 5.

The question we ask is: “In the interest of quality and efficiency, why should the packaging businesses allow manual touchpoints in the production workflow?” All these problems could be easily fixed by implementing an automated packaging workflow solution (like the one seen in Figure 6).

Digital Transformation

Start by answering this question: “Across all functions and departments, how digital is your business on a scale from zero to 100?”
You should be able to evaluate some of these aspects:

• Do we have digital infrastructure?
• Do we have digital skills?
• Do we have a digital training plan?
• What is our digital strategy?
• Do we have digital key performance indicators (KPIs)?

In Esko’s case, we utilize a Digital Maturity Model for Packaging Suppliers (Figure 7), based on five different stages:

• Reactive: You react to external events. You rely on people to solve problems, always acting in fire-fighting mode. As you can see, the biggest problem of this stage is that you need skilled people to make decisions under pressure
• Organize: You have some professional business tools, including planning, but you still rely heavily on people to grow your organization
• Digitalized: You have automated functions within departments and you have automation software to take over repetitive tasks, but you are working in silos
• Connected: Automation is a cornerstone to the business driven by (meta) data exchange between departments
• Intelligent: Artificial intelligence and machine learning drive business automation. People add value; machines and automation avoid waste

Based on these stages, you will analyze different aspects/areas of your organization; for example, leadership concerns (Figure 8). Evaluating leadership style entails the examination of business growth, print quality, timeliness, environmental sustainability and equipment effectiveness.

From there, you move on to study workflow steps like customer communication, internal communication, artwork preparation, good for print approval, sheet layout, plate making, press, postprint, and packing and shipping logistics. These are some examples, but you should add any other step or area relevant for your own process. After that, we use a table to position each area in the Digital Maturity Model, creating a specific ID card for each company (Figure 9).

And from here we define a path forward (Figure 10) to move the areas that represent more impact first without leaving the other ones behind. This way you can define a clear path for your organization.

This plan should be in compliance with your environment sustainability strategy, as well as with your talent hiring and retention strategy.

Digital transformation is your goal, with a focus on environment sustainability and the war for talent as part of the strategy. It will become critical in the years to come. Don’t wait to see if this will happen, because it will. Take a high enough vantage point to see where your business is today and use value stream mapping to see where you need to change.

Always remember that innovation is a team play.

About the Author

Julian Fernandez is business development manager, flexo—America for Esko. He has been with the firm for more than 10 years and in that time has held the titles team leader, flexo and color; pre-sales product specialist, color and flexo; and solution architect, color and flexo. His complete graphic arts experience stretches over 30+ years, with time spent at Intermarket Corp, DuPont Latin America and Interpack Envases SA. He is a G7 expert, holding Idealliance certification, and also holds FIRST Implementation Specialist Certification. He has contributed to both FLEXO and FIRST on a regular basis, in addition to serving as a session chair at FTA’s FORUM 2017, 2018 and 2023.

Learn more about Esko at esko.com.