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Printing_News_September_2016

Inkjet’s Age When It Comes to Workfl ow Productivity, Start With Finishing When bottlenecks are the fault of the equipment, it’s because the PSP didn’t do their homework when shopping for fi nishing—or bought on the cheap. By Richard Romano You’ve seen those joke signs that read “PLAN AHEAD,” where the beginning letters P-L-A are written big and wide, but at the end the A and D are squeezed in or written on a separate line. It’s a good metaphor for thinking about fi nishing, especially in the digital age. Bottlenecks in fi nishing—a common complaint— are oft en the result of poor planning further upstream, and not the fault of the equipment per se. But when bottlenecks are the fault of the equipment, it’s because the PSP didn’t do their homework when shopping for fi nishing—or bought on the cheap. “When print service providers (PSPs) invest in a printer, they do a lot of research,” said Si Nguyen, VP of sales for Duplo USA, “but when it comes to fi nishing, it’s an aft erthought. We sometimes think we’re the red-headed stepchild.” It’s also tempting to want to use legacy fi nishing equipment designed for off set, but that may end up causing more problems than it solves. Today’s new features such as automation and push-button simplicity are designed to increase effi - ciency and productivity, helping avoid the bindery bottleneck. “You have to look at the fi nished product fi rst, then work your way back,” said Paul Steinke, national sales manager for Standard Finishing. “Th at includes using smarter solutions on the fi nishing side and incorporating workfl ow, and the JDF workfl ow specifi cally, to maximize the effi ciency of the fi nishing process. Th at goes all the way back to imposition.” Printers also need to be able to see “over the horizon” (so to speak) when planning their fi nishing investment. “Th e biggest challenge for printers purchasing digital fi nishing lines today is to not only understand their current production needs but also predict what their needs will be in the future,” said Jason Elliott, VP, sales, for manroland web systems. “Th e print engines are getting faster each year and continue to bridge the gap to short-run off set. Equally, the workfl ow systems are developing at an alarming pace and the level of personalization that we will see in the next few years is unfathomable to the possibilities we imagine today.” The More That Changes... While it’s true that fi nishing processes haven’t changed all that much—stitchers still stitch, binders still bind, folders still fold, booklet makers still make booklets— but getting rolls or book blocks to that point has changed quite dramatically. Th e nature of those rolls and book blocks has changed as well. “In a digital environment, we’re printing to order and printing to quantity vs. overprinting, which is what has typically been done on the off set side,” said Steinke. Th is means that there is little or no room for error, and one damaged sheet can mean the need to reprint, lest John Doe not get his transactional document. Th e diff erence between off set and digital workfl ows becomes acute when we think about “unassembled print output”— which is what off set is—vs. “assembled print output”—which is what digital is. Digital printing equipment typically yields cut sheets, collated sets, or book blocks that are ready for fi nishing, rather than “raw” output that needs to be “prefi nished” such as folding and gathering, cutting imposed signatures, and so forth. So fi nishing equipment that is geared for the off set way of doing things may not be compatible with digital output. “To try to fold the digital output into traditional off set output is very ineffi - cient and is a cumbersome, labor-intensive process, especially if you have a very short turnaround time,” said Steinke. “In digital print, you rarely have overruns to compensate for mistakes.” “You have to be very strategic in how you get the product from press to bindery,” said Andrew Fetherman, director of digital solutions for Muller Martini. “Work-in-progress management is important to manage productivity.” Raising the Bar As a result, barcode-enabled fi nishing has become essential to managing the fi nishing process. In the prepress stage, you encrypt a barcode— be it QR or some other kind of code— with all the information about the job: what equipment is required, untrimmed size, trimmed size, thickness, what cover goes with what interior pages, and so on. Th is code is printed like other types of printer’s marks. It’s scanned by the fi nishing equipment, which then automatically sets up the job parameters on the machine. “It allows you to eliminate makeready in the bindery,” said Fetherman. It’s also more and more necessary to track where each piece is in the shop, not just for internal productivity, but for customer communication and online job tracking. 28 Printing News ® September 2016 PrintingNews®com


Printing_News_September_2016
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