1. Empower the end-user. Nearly 43% of in-plants were focused on improving their customer's interaction through web-based systems[2], i.e.Web to print, in 2015. No wonder. Allowing end-users to upload, edit, and approve their jobs, without in-plant staff needing to intervene, is a key method to increase the efficiency of the entire operation.

2. Don't island hop. A vacation of island hoping is perfectly OK. Forcing your print jobs to hop between your "islands of automation", however, is not. Look holistically at how jobs (especially standard ones) enter, progress, and leave the in-plant. Start to eliminate the number of hops in between production steps, e.g. order submission is automated but staff has to open, check, and send the file to print.

3. Stop putting messages in a bottle. If you want to send a message quickly, then you wouldn't put it in a bottle and toss it into the ocean. Yet, critical communications with the end-user and within the production facilities is often bottled up. Set the information free and minimize the back-and-forth by sending e-mail status notifications to end-users and eliminating handwritten job tickets for production.

4. Increase equipment utilization. Managing and scheduling more than one digital press can be a tiresome exercise, especially when industry run lengths are going down while the overall number of jobs are increasing. Implement output management software that can intelligently route, split, and balance jobs across multiple presses. It can even help reduce costs (click-charges) by sending color and black-and-white pages to the best equipment. .

5. Automate the last mile. On average, the finishing process adds 28.5% of value to a printed job [3]. The adoption of in-line finishing equipment and workflow tools to automate the setup of finishing equipment is still relatively low. Evaluate the potential labor savings that could be gained from automated in-line finishing, e.g. booklet making.