Jaakkoo-Taara Benefits from Increased Productivity, Accuracy and Structural Integrity with ArtiosCAD and Automation Engine Software

Jaakkoo-Taara, Turku, Finland

As pioneers in service and technology in Finland, smooth production, flawless products and customer trust in the quality of service are the cornerstones of Jaakkoo-Taara’s operations. Its experts help customers choose the right format for their needs and advise on everything from personalization and security printing through to board and paper selection and special technologies. The company has the capability to implement even the most demanding special features related to the safety, identification and traceability of packaging, such as microtexts and special varnishes that are only visible in a certain light, as well as holograms for reassurance of authenticity.

“Packaging represents 100 per cent of our business,” said Mika Mattila, Development Engineer with Jaakkoo-Taara. “While the majority of this involves the manufacture of pharmaceutical boxes, we also work with a number of food packaging customers. Having built our reputation on delivering quality products as quickly as our customers demand, it is vital that we continue to invest in technology that helps us maintain our level of service across both these markets.
“We had already acquired Esko Automation Engine to automate our prepress workflow, WebCenter to manage our customer journey more efficiently and ArtPro+ to ensure accuracy and reduce waste on press,” said Mika. “We had been using a different structural design software, but once we had seen the difference the other Esko solutions made to our productivity and efficiency, it made perfect sense to invest in ArtiosCAD software for a completely connected process.”

Jaakkoo-Taara made the decision to switch to using Esko ArtiosCAD in 2018. “Like every other packaging company, the challenge we faced was making sure that we could meet each individual customer’s specific requests, and not just quickly, but also with complete accuracy and structural integrity,” said Mika. “We have had some customers for a very, very long time, and it was important to us that we could make a smooth transition to the new software, so that they noticed the improvements in terms of productivity, but without interruption to timeframes or any other noticeable difference in our service.”

Esko ArtiosCAD is the world’s most popular structural design software for packaging, specifically designed to boost productivity for packaging professionals and capable of handling structural design, product development, virtual prototyping and manufacturing operations. Importantly, ArtiosCAD makes it easy to create even challenging designs, handling all the metrics, and building a perfectly fitting pack around any imported 3D CAD product model.

“While there is a little more demand for creativity from our food packaging customers than from our pharma customers, the ability to automate and ensure total accuracy means that we get boxes made much more quickly,” said Mika. “We have two of our designers using ArtiosCAD full time, every day, and it helps them to turn around jobs quickly, as well as accurately.”

ArtiosCAD saves hours of design work by turning custom designs into resizable design templates and adding them to a corporate library. The full integration of structural and graphic design files with production files also eliminates costly mistakes downstream in the workflow. ArtiosCAD also enables designers to virtually fold designs in 3D to check for inconsistencies before going to print.

Smart standards save design time and reduce errors, while an intelligent, resizable design library of the US, ECMA, FEFCO and display standards makes design decisions easy for the user.

“Linking ArtiosCAD to our Automation Engine means we can import carton layouts automatically, which saves us a lot of time and prevents any rekeying errors being introduced,” said Mika. “Not only is it fast and easy to use, but the various tools are great for our designers and us as a business. For example, it has made it possible for us to share 3D designs with our customers using WebCenter, which means they can see exactly how the pack will look and can amend or approve it much more quickly.

“We can also make our own specific shortcuts, which again speeds up the whole process for us. With our tailored plateholder and marks shortcuts, users can complete the process of adding these into the layout with just the touch of a button,” he said. “With the additional ArtiosCAD Resizable Design Tools license, we can also modify default standards to do exactly the jobs we want them to.”

Improved connectivity throughout the packaging prepress process has also delivered further efficiency and productivity gains. “We have a full Esko ecosystem of Esko software, with Automation Engine, WebCenter, ArtPro+ and Imaging Engine all connected, so adding ArtiosCAD was very straightforward for us,” said Mika. “With Automation Engine reading the ArtiosCAD files, we’ve been able to speed up the whole workflow from design through to production.”

Mika said that as a Care Plan customer, Jaakkoo-Taara also benefited from on-demand support from the Esko maintenance team. “We have enjoyed a lot of excellent training, and the trainers have made themselves available whenever we’ve had any questions for them,” he said. “As a customer with the maintenance contract, we also receive any updates straight away and the Esko support team do everything for us,” he said. “This means that we can get on with doing what we do best, which is using our expertise to solve our customers’ problems.”