The 68-staff company, which has spent over £2m on new premises and kit in 18 months, more recently integrated the Tharstern Primo MIS directly into an Esko Automation Engine.
Automation brings sales, customer and studio teams together on one workflow platform, avoiding a previous need to re-input data.
Tharstern’s advanced Primo software enables the £11m-turnover company to streamline print for flexible packaging, sachets, films, laminates and labels.
The Nilpeter house, which is based in a 5,110sqm office in Leeds, works for food and drink, pharmaceuticals, health, beauty, automotive and dietary markets.
Director Chris Ellison, who runs the business with wife Sue, said: “Integrating the Esko Automation Engine with Tharstern has overcome a bottleneck that could challenge a lean business.
“The time it takes from getting initial artwork through to an approved PDF has been halved. We are creating a complete workflow to run in time, so we can scale our business accordingly.”
He added: “Rival systems look simpler and easier to use but when you drill down to information, the accuracy and flexibility of the Tharstern goes way beyond that of other systems.”
According to Ellison, the technology was shaving off half an hour of admin work on a typical job, “and when you are doing a thousand or so jobs a month that's a lot of minutes”.
Sue Ellison said: “The MIS is an intuitive business in a box rather than something that just sits on your desk. It touches every area and department of the business.
“You can run it on any kind of report; it starts when you estimate, finishes when you deliver and links to everything. It frees repro and customer service teams to talk to each other and clients.”
Tharstern sales director Lee Ward said: “OPM has been a long-standing customer and is an example of how companies are streamlining their processes though integration and automation.
“At the recent Packaging Innovations event we showed some of the latest features now released for the packaging sector.
“These can ease integrating MIS into other workflows such as those used by other market-leaders, which include Heidelberg, Esko and Manroland.”
