Live plate status board
Every plate's current state across imaging, washout, drying, finishing, QC, and ship — refreshed off floor activity, not manual updates.
Prepress job tracking · Live plate status
Prepress job tracking that knows what a plate actually is.
Live status for every job and every plate — from artwork intake through imaging, finishing, QC, and ship. No more whiteboards, no more 'let me check with the floor', no more missed press dates.
Plate area · jobs · customers · AR — one system of record
Why generic job tracking misses
A flexo plate is not a service ticket. Generic trackers don't know the difference.
Most job-tracking and project-management tools assume work moves in a straight line: ticket opens, ticket closes. Flexo prepress doesn't work that way. A job becomes one to twelve plates. Plates merge into gangs. Gangs split back into customer POs. Each plate has its own state, its own imaging slot, its own QC pass.
A 'job' is actually 1 to N plates, each with its own state
One incoming job ticket spawns multiple plates, each at a different stage of imaging, washout, finishing, and QC. Generic trackers force you to model this as sub-tasks — which immediately drifts from the floor reality.
Gangs share a single plate across multiple POs
When small jobs share imaging area for yield, the plate has one physical state but multiple owners. Service-ticket tools have no concept of this — so allocation and status both end up in someone's head.
Status questions come from three different audiences
CSRs need a customer-facing view. The floor needs a press-date view. Owners need a margin view. Generic trackers give one timeline view and ask you to filter — instead of modeling the three audiences natively.
Press dates aren't soft deadlines — they're rigid
Miss a press date and the converter's line stops. Flexo prepress lives or dies on the ship-by date, and generic project tools don't surface plates at risk until the deadline has slipped.
Flexoworks tracks plates, not tickets. Every plate carries its own job ID and live state through imaging, washout, drying, finishing, QC, and outbound shipping — with gang allocation, customer visibility, and at-risk press-date alerts modeled in. The tracker speaks the language of the shop floor.
What it tracks
Live visibility across every plate, every gang, every press date.
Status that's accurate to the floor — not a CSR's best guess from a 9 AM whiteboard read.
Job → plate → gang hierarchy
One job spawns N plates; gangs roll up plates across customer POs. Status rolls up and down the hierarchy without anyone reconciling it by hand.
Press-date risk alerts
Every job carries the converter's press date. Plates falling behind imaging or finishing throughput trigger early alerts — not late discoveries.
Exception flags by station
QC failures, washout issues, distortion-factor recuts, and rush re-images flag against the originating job so CSRs and shop leads see the problem before the customer does.
QC pass records per plate
Every plate logs its QC checks — depth measurement, anilox compatibility, screening verification — against the original spec, audit-ready for the customer.
Throughput & WIP reporting
How many plates moved through each station yesterday, last week, last month — by imager, by operator, by plate type. Floor capacity decisions on real data.
How tracking sits in your stack
Reads from your workflow tools. Drives the CSR, floor, and customer views.
Flexoworks doesn't try to replace the imaging side. It reads imaging events out of your existing workflow engine, attaches them to the job and plate records, and presents the views your team actually needs.
Prepress workflow tools image the plate
Your existing workflow engine handles RIPping, screening, step-and-repeat, CDI imaging control, and washout. Imaging events feed into Flexoworks.
- Esko Automation Engine
- Esko Flexo Front End
- Hybrid CLOUDFLOW
- Kodak Prinergy
Flexoworks tracks the plate through the shop
Imaging events plus finishing, QC, and ship events combine into one live plate timeline. CSRs, shop leads, and customers each get the view they need.
- Live plate status board
- Press-date risk alerts
- Customer-facing status portal
- Per-station throughput reports
Who uses the tracker
One source of truth — three audiences, three views.
CSRs answering 'where is my job?'
Live customer-facing status pulled from floor reality. Stops the call-the-floor relay and gives CSRs a status they can quote without checking.
Shop leads running the floor
Plates by station, plates at risk, plates blocked. Press-date-driven prioritization replaces the daily whiteboard scrum.
Customers asking for visibility
Optional customer portal lets brands and converters see their own job status — without your CSRs becoming the lookup layer.
Tracking-relevant integrations
Reads from your imaging stack. Pushes to the systems that need the status.
Job-tracking is only useful when it reflects what's actually happening on the floor and gets the right status to the right person. Flexoworks pulls imaging events from your workflow engine and pushes status updates to the channels customers actually watch.
- Prepress workflow events
- Esko Automation Engine
- Esko Flexo Front End
- Hybrid CLOUDFLOW
- Kodak Prinergy
- Shipping status
- ShipStation
- FedEx Web Services
- UPS APIs
- Customer notifications
- Email status updates
- Customer portal
- Webhooks
- Accounting handoff
- QuickBooks Online
- Sage Intacct
- NetSuite ERP
Tracking questions
What CSRs and shop leads ask first.
Does the tracker update automatically or do we have to mark stages manually?
Both. Imaging events feed in automatically from your workflow engine. Finishing, QC, and ship are tracked with quick floor confirmations — usually a barcode scan or a one-tap status on a tablet at the station. No 50-field forms.Can our customers see their own status without calling us?
Yes — there's an optional customer portal. Brands and converters log in and see the status of their own jobs and plates. CSRs stop being the lookup layer for routine 'where is it?' questions.How does it handle gangs where one plate belongs to multiple POs?
Gangs are a first-class entity. A single plate carries its physical state, but allocation across customer POs is tracked separately so each customer sees just their portion. Throughput and AR roll up correctly without manual splits.What does the press-date risk alert actually do?
Every job carries the converter's required press date. Flexoworks compares planned imaging and finishing times against current floor throughput and flags plates that are trending late — usually days before a CSR would notice manually. Shop leads get the alert; CSRs get a chance to call the customer first.Can we still use our existing prepress workflow tools?
Yes — that's the design. Flexoworks reads imaging events from Esko, Hybrid, or Kodak and layers tracking on top. You don't replace your workflow engine to get the tracker.
See live tracking on your shop
A 30-minute walkthrough on your jobs, your plates, your press dates.
Bring a real job in flight. We'll show you the live status board, the press-date risk view, the customer portal, and what the CSR sees when a brand calls — all on your data.