Quick Printing is the resource for the Commercial printing, visual and graphic arts industries. Since 1977, Quick Printing has focused on improving efficiency and increasing sales and profits in the print shop. Industry experts share their ideas and
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Quick Printing | February 2015 19 MyPRINTResource.com "Especially on short-run jobs, every touch point is a cost, in a way," said Julie Watson, VP of strategic marketing for Ultimate TechnoGraphics, a developer of automation soft- ware such as the "classic" Impostrip imposition software. "Time spent trying to manipulate a fle is a cost, and is also more error-prone, so the automation environment has to be quick." The company's Ultimate Bindery takes automation one step further and can send a job all the way from pre- press through fnishing untouched by human hands. For Xanté the focus is on simplifying processes such as controlling color and matching spot colors, Ross explained. iQueue is a multi-user prepress workfow designed specif- cally for digital color printing. It makes it easier to manage multiple digital fles, make independent CMYK/density adjustments, match critical spot colors, select line screens, apply imposition, estimate job cost, track consumables, run counts, and share digital fles -- from multiple workstations. One of the frm's goals is to reduce the knowledge level that is required of operators. "We have multiple reports of secretaries running our equipment at customer sites," he added. iQueue version updates now are released about every six months, so look for the next one in mid-2015. As workfow automation becomes more powerful and prevalent, humans are only needed when there is a prob- lem, but even common problems can be fxed automatically. "In the digital print space, automation is relatively simple and quick using a variety of tools available for EFI Fiery production environments," said Henze. "Solu- tions like EFI Fiery Command WorkStation, Fiery Image Enhance Visual Editor, Fiery ImageViewer, Fiery JobFlow and advanced preset, hot folder and virtual printer tools virtually eliminate issues that have downstream impact like missing fonts and low-res images, as well as address more complex issues like matching brand colors." One of the challenges that digital printing has presented printers is aggregating a large number of short-run jobs to make up for what would have been a comparatively lucra- tive long-run offset job. Part of this is a sales and market- ing problem, but once those jobs are obtained, managing capacity becomes the challenge, so automation and effciency are necessary to move jobs through the shop as quickly as possible, all the while maintaining quality. Thus, automation becomes a competitive advantage. "Companies who do not have automated prepress departments are starting to panic," said Fabian Prud- homme, vice president of Enfocus. Enfocus' Switch is a workfow automation tool that allows both print buyers and print providers to automate repetitive tasks, prefight and fx fles, collaborate, and it can link to many third-par- ty applications. "We see that companies that have not automated are kind of left behind. Executing the same task takes them a lot longer than their automated peers." "Estimate that each step [in a production workfow] takes fve minutes," said Watson. "If I have 25 jobs in a day, [automation offers] a lot more savings than if I have two jobs in a day. That makes a difference." For more information, visit MyPRINTResource.com/12034678