priint:suite offers functions for easy production control and monitoring
What is production planning in publishing?
The creation of catalogs, price lists, brochures, or other product documentation is a complex process that goes far beyond mere layout. It involves the structured planning, control, and monitoring of all steps—from data provision and page planning to approval and final production. System-supported production planning creates transparency, efficiency, and security—especially for large publications with many participants, language versions, or variants.
Typical challenges
In many companies, the planning and management of publications is still heavily influenced by manual processes. Catalogs, price lists, and brochures are often coordinated using Excel spreadsheets, email exchanges, and individually maintained documents. Information about products, deadlines, or responsibilities is often spread across different systems and people. This not only leads to media breaks, but also to a high level of coordination, unclear responsibilities, and low transparency regarding the project status. Changes—for example, to product data, layouts, or deadlines—are difficult to track and regularly lead to delays or duplicate work. Such “old school” processes quickly reach their limits, especially with multilingual or multi-variant publications, with noticeable effects on quality, efficiency, and time-to-market.
How does system-supported production planning work?
The focus is on planning publications based on centrally maintained product data—for example, from PIM, ERP, or DAM systems. This data is linked to templates and layout structures so that content can be planned specifically for individual pages.
Benefits of integrated production planning
The advantages are obvious: Centralized control of all production steps significantly speeds up processes and minimizes sources of error. Coordination between departments, markets, and external partners is simplified because everyone involved has access to the same data and planning status. Changes—for example, to products, prices, or layouts—can be flexibly incorporated without jeopardizing the entire process.
CI conformity is also maintained: the use of central templates and defined workflows ensures that all publications comply with the corporate design, regardless of how many variants or language versions are created.
How the priint:suite makes production planning efficient
priint:suite offers comprehensive functions for planning and controlling publication projects. These include visual page planning, automatic task scheduling, linking project plans, resource planning, and status monitoring of ongoing productions. priint:suite offers a visual planning module that allows products to be placed on pages using drag & drop, including a preview function and variant control. Integration into existing system landscapes, such as PIM, ERP, or DAM, creates a consistent, media-break-free process.
Page allocation is automated based on rules and can be used for single and double pages or entire page spreads. At the same time, tasks, deadlines, and resources can be displayed on Kanban boards and in project plans and linked to each other. This provides a consistent overview of the status, versions, and participants—from initial planning to final approval.
Customers who have achieved success with production planning
