Calculate Minimum Production Time

To accurately calculate product group speed, you must know the minimum time required for all processes within the job’s production. For example, for digital printing processes, the machine speed must include the time to RIP files prior to printing. For jobs with multiple runs, then you must count this time in each run.

Do all of the following to set up minimum production time:

1. Navigate to Sales > Records > iQuote > Engineering > Production Group.

The Production Group List screen opens.

2. ‎On the Production Group List screen, select a production group and then click Advanced Settings.

The Production Group Advanced Settings screen opens, with all the details for the Production Group.

3. On the Speed tab of the Production Group Advanced Settings screen, enter values in the Minimal Time (Minutes) field as follows:

Tip: You can either create a new speed record or edit a current one for this field.

• Enter the minimum time in minutes.
• Select a variable to multiply the minimum time.

Note: If you leave this field blank, the system does not use any multiples to calculate the minimal time.

• Select a variable to divide the result of the minimum time x the variable.

Note: If you leave this field blank, the system does not use any divisor to calculate the minimal time.

4. Click Save and Close.

 

Examples: Minimum Production Time Calculations

Case 1: Define a minimum time per run

Scenario: For Digital Press A, it takes 10 minutes for the RIP system to process a wide format image. For the system to consider this time on each run, select Run Quantity (Press) as the multiplier variable in the Minimal Time (Minutes) field:

The job takes a total of 5 minutes to print per run. iQuote uses the values in the uses the values in the Minimum Time (Minutes) field to calculate the time to finish the digital process for this job:

Case 2: Production group minimum time different from the Speed table

Besides the configuration on the Speed tab, there is also a Minimum Time (Minutes) field in the Speed Table record. (Navigate to Sales > Records > iQuote > Engineering > Speed Table.)

From the Speed tab, you can assign a Speed Table record to the Production Group:

If the minimum time on the Speed tab (in the Production Group) is different from the one in the selected Speed table, then the system uses the minimum time with the highest value.

Scenario: Consider the following Production Group configuration:

• Minimum Time: 10 min
• Multiplier: Runs

Assume that the Speed Table in this scenario includes a minimum time of 40 min for the Job.

In this situation, the configuration used depends on the number of runs: