Your press, enquiry to carton. Twice.
Once the way it runs today. Once the way it runs on Prodman ERP. Tick every line on the left that happens in your press, and the right side lights up with what changes and what it is worth.
A press does not lose money in one big event. It loses it in makeready sheets, plate remakes, gathering errors, foiling rejects and outsourced binding nobody measured. Each one is small. There are hundreds of them in a year, and none of them appear anywhere you look.
The other problem is the calendar. Educational titles land together and tender dates do not move. Diaries are worse: eleven quiet months, then every corporate client wants their logo foiled on 4,000 books before the first week of January. Under that compression there is no time to check anything twice. A wrong logo goes to print on Tuesday and is found on Friday.
What follows is the process, stage by stage, as it actually runs in most presses. Read the left column and tick what is true for you. There is no form, nothing gets submitted, and nothing is sent anywhere.
Tick every line true in your factory.
Be honest. Nobody is watching. Each one you tick lights up the way the same moment runs on Prodman ERP, and adds what that problem is quietly costing you every year.
Estimate and quotation
Every closed job carries real makeready, real paper consumed, real binding hours and real rejects. The next estimate is built on those.
Quotes sit in a pipeline with a status. Anything untouched for a week raises its hand on its own.
Trim, extent, paper, binding style, foiling, lamination, quantity and every revision sit on one record everyone reads from.
Artwork, proof and approval
The client approves the exact file, on the portal, with a name and a timestamp attached. Version 4 cannot be confused with version 2 ever again.
The approval check sits in the system, not in a person's discipline under deadline pressure. No screen and no shortcut will start that work order.
A change after the approval is visible as a change after approval, in writing, and it reopens the check automatically.
Planning the load
The production board and Gantt show the whole press loaded against real capacity, readable by anyone who should see it.
The Gantt shows every accepted job against real machine and line capacity. An order that will not fit shows as not fitting, in September, while you can still act on it.
Extent, trim and sheet size drive the forme plan, and it travels on the work order instead of on a loose sheet.
On the floor
The operator scans the job, scans the machine, enters produced and rejected. That is the entire data entry burden on your floor.
The operator enters produced and rejected. Spoilage rolls up by machine, by operator and by job, in rupees.
The scan is attributed. Output and rejects both attach to a name and a shift, without anyone filling in a register.
Downtime hours accumulate per machine and per cause across the whole year.
Paper, board and stores
Requirement from the forme plan, live godown balance, and a low-stock warning early enough to buy one lot instead of two.
Issues and receipts happen at the point of work, so the register matches the godown. Demand from accepted orders becomes a buying list with dates, approvals and goods receipts on one record.
Balances and overs are recorded at the end of the run instead of being pushed under a table.
Binding, finishing and outsourced work
Outsourced stages sit on the same job record, with the vendor confirming receipt, quantity and completion in writing.
Stage-wise quality entries catch the fault at gathering or sewing, on that machine, on that shift, before the next 3,000 are made the same way.
Wastage rolls up by stage, machine, operator and job, in rupees, not in vague percentages.
Dispatch and the customer
Produced, bound, packed and dispatched are compared to the ordered quantity at dispatch, not after.
One order number carries every delivery address and quantity from enquiry through to the packing slip.
Jobs falling behind their promised date raise an alert on their own, without anyone running a report.
The client portal shows exactly which stage their job is at, updated by the floor, not by an executive typing an update.
After the job
Paper, plates, makeready, press hours, binding, foiling, outsourced work and rejects roll into one job cost you can compare against the estimate.
Tick the lines above to see what they cost you.
Assumes materials at 55% of turnover and a 12% net margin, the same assumptions as the ROI calculator, where you can change every one of them.
We set up every factory on site, by hand. That is why we take only a few each quarter.
What a Monday morning looks like after that.
- You open one page at 9am and know every job, every signature and every machine, without a floor round.
- Not one book goes to press on an artwork or proof the client has not approved in writing.
- Makeready and spoilage are numbers per machine and per operator, and they are falling.
- Paper and rexine are bought in September against a plan, in one lot, at a rate you negotiated.
- Your laminator, foiler and binder confirm dates on a portal, so a delay reaches you the day it happens.
- A gathering or binding fault is caught at that machine, on that shift, not at the packing table.
- Your ten biggest clients check their own status on the portal, and stop calling you in November.
- In February you sit down with the season's real numbers instead of a bank balance and a theory.
What owners ask us at this point.
Different specification, same stages. Prepress, plates, printing, folding, gathering, sewing or wiro, binding, foiling, lamination, trimming, packing. The specification changes per job and travels on the order. The stages are configured once, to your press.
The compression is exactly the argument for it. A press that runs steadily all year can absorb a mistake. A unit doing most of its diary business in eight weeks cannot. The reprint you avoid in November is worth more than the same reprint avoided in April, because in November there is no time to make it again.
No. Outsourced stages are part of the same job. The vendor confirms receipt, quantity and completion on the supplier portal, so an outside stage is as visible as an inside one. Losing sight of material once it leaves the gate is one of the main reasons presses miss dates.
Scan the job, scan the machine, enter produced and rejected. That is the whole interaction and it takes seconds. We kept it that short on purpose, because every system that asked a shop floor to fill in a form has failed.
No. Tally keeps your books and stays where it is. Prodman ERP runs the floor and the order, which is the part Tally was never built for. They work alongside each other.
Before June. We set every factory up on site, by hand, and we want a full quiet cycle to configure your stages, load your items and train your team before the first big order lands. Starting in August means learning the system in the same weeks you are trying to ship.
Stop putting out fires. Start seeing the floor.
Book a 30-minute demo and we will show you Prodman ERP on a factory like yours. We take only a few factories each quarter, because we set up every one of them on site, by hand.
Taking on a limited group this quarter