Grasl Druck & Medien GmbH, Bad Vöslau: Two Become One

Offering both offset and digital printing expands a company's range of services. It also boosts timescale flexibility. Both printing processes can now be controlled with a single prepress workflow. The Prinect Digital Print Manager achieves this by integrating digital printing systems in the Prinect print shop workflow.

The slogan of Austrian print shop Grasl Druck & Neue Medien GmbH, which currently employs a workforce of 120 in Bad Vöslau near Vienna, is "Everything from a single source with a single point of contact." To remain true to this motto, the print shop augmented its existing offset equipment with two digital printing presses - an HP Indigo 3050 and a Xerox DC 7000. This had the disadvantage of creating three parallel prepress workflows, which in turn increased the operator input and maintenance work required. It also meant deciding early on whether to process a job using offset or digital printing. To standardize procedures, the print shop introduced the Prinect Digital Print Manager.

Standard format brings integration
The Prinect Digital Print Manager uses Job Definition Format (JDF) and Job Messaging Format (JMF) to communicate with digital systems. It enables comprehensive information to be defined on the screen - known as the Prinect Cockpit - and to be output as a job to offset or digital print systems. The digital output parameters can be saved in processing sequences, thereby enabling automatic print job transfer. The Prinect Digital Print Manager also ensures feedback of production data from the digital printing presses to the Prinect Cockpit. For example, users can see on screen whether/when a digital print job is complete and initiate subsequent postpress operations at the appropriate time. "We consider the enhanced automation of prepress processes and the greater transparency of job tracking to be key benefits," reveals Walter Grasl.

Flexible selection of printing processes
It is not, however, simply a case of "either/ or". Jobs can also be output on both offset and digital presses. "If we are printing an annual report, for example, we can use offset printing for the actual production run but also produce digital prints quickly in advance," explains Grasl. This could quite conceivably work the other way round, too. If a catalog produced using offset printing needs to be reprinted in a very short run with a particular quality level, this can be done very quickly and cost-effectively using digital printing. Hybrid products can also be managed simply, sharing production between offset and digital printing presses.

In future, it should also be possible to output booklet proofs from Prinect Prepress Manager directly on digital printing presses using the Prinect Digital Print Manager. This will save time and money compared with form proofs or output on laser printers, while also offering higher quality and greater flexibility in terms of formats.

Faster return on investment
Flexibility in production brings a particularly quick return on investment for short runs and print-on-demand jobs. "We all benefit from the Prinect Digital Print Manager and now only use a single prepress system for offset and digital printing. This workflow standardization saves us a great deal of time and money and makes our production operations much more flexible," explains Grasl. Production staff can now decide at the last minute whether to output imposed pages on one of the two Suprasetter 105 presses, the HP Indigo 3050, or the Xerox DC 7000. In addition to offering everything from a single source, Grasl Druck & Neue Medien GmbH thus now also satisfies customer needs faster.