Reaping the Rewards of Migration to Heidelberg's Prinect Printready Workflow |
 |
Donner & Nagel completes switch to JDF workflow
A 30-percent increase in capacity from the same workforce and turnaround times up by a third - that is the impressive upshot of migrating from Prinergy to the Heidelberg workflow solution Prinect Printready System 2.0. It took only two months to complete the switch successfully at the Essen-based prepress service provider Donner & Nagel.
Boasting over 25 years as a quality service provider, Donner & Nagel's 32-strong workforce today complements its traditional prepress spectrum with comprehensive, up-to-date print data and color management know-how. To cover the accompanying IT requirements, its subsidiary Mark 5 GmbH provides a full range of servers and database and storage infrastructures. About a year ago, Friedhelm Donner and Michael Zukunft, Managing Directors of Donner & Nagel GmbH in Essen, faced a decision: upgrade the existing workflow solution or lose competitivity. The company's throughput was too low, its processes too slow, and its workflow contained too many manual steps and too little standardization. What is more, the existing workflow software generated inexplicable and unreproducible errors. This situation did not augur well for the future competitivity of the prepress service provider, founded in 1979. After an extensive selection process, the company decided to implement the JDF-based prepress workflow solution Prinect Printready System 2.0 from Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG.
A plan was drawn up to standardize the company's technical processes by basing the new system entirely on the output format PDF/X3. This had not been possible with the old workflow. As for the organizational structure, the company is divided into two business areas that previously used parallel PDF workflows. In the past, it had been necessary to keep these two (high and low-resolution PDF) workflows separate to keep the workload for the old Prinergy solution in check.
Standardization achieved across the board
"One of the key objectives of implementing the new workflow was to consolidate and standardize the workflows in our two business areas," explains Andreas Fink, Head of Technology at Donner & Nagel. The many manual operations in our previous workflow made it needlessly complex and slow. "Prinect Printready lets us predefine workflows and processes in the software for re-use at any time, and enables a high degree of automation." To achieve this, all the individual operations that a PDF has to go through before completion are defined in group templates. These can then be used for identical orders. For example, they might contain procedures for handling a PDF that contains RGB images, and automate its conversion to CMYK. It is also possible to integrate ICC profiles for output automatically. "The solution enables us to create sequences for each customer that we can use again and again - a real boost for our productivity. It wasn't possible to create customer-specific group templates with the previous solution," says Fink, summing up the advantages of the new workflow. Prinect Printready also supports automated trapping. Here too, settings for individual customers or orders can be predefined or called up at any time. "Although we deal mainly with individual orders, our efficiency is now such that we operate like a series manufacturer." The JDF-based architecture increases transparency because all job parameters can be stored centrally and called up by authorized parties using the job ticket.
| |
Greater throughput
The processes and servers for creating PDFs with high and low resolutions, which were previously separate, were also unified during implementation of the Prinect solution. "We wanted to be able to handle both workflows using one central server. The old system did not have the capacity to do this," said Donner, outlining the situation at the outset. Prinect Printready soon solved this production bottleneck. "The first performance readings after implementation indicated that the Printready workflow is 20 to 30 percent quicker than the old system. What's more, with incoming orders on the up, the solution has the capacity to handle more jobs using the same system facilities and number of workers." The inexplicably long computing times of the previous solution are also a thing of the past. "The increased performance of the workflow system has almost cut out waiting times for employees."
Fast migration
During system migration, which took three months, the data from the old system was transferred step by step. The first tests with Prinect Printready, around three weeks after the start of the migration, revealed no major frictional losses, so within a few days it was possible to create templates for automating the first subprocesses in the system. After two months, the company's periodicals production department was able to switch all of its processes to Printready. "On the whole, the migration period was easier than we anticipated. We worked closely with experts from Heidelberg throughout, and they also arranged for our employees to be trained in using the new system," explains Zukunft.
After six months of faultless operation of Prinect Printready, phase 2 of the project was implemented and the last production department switched from Prinergy to Prinect Printready. The rest of the company was working exclusively with the Printready system within two weeks of its introduction. "The seamless transition was down to two key factors: firstly, splendid internal project organization by the team at our IT subsidiary, Mark 5 GmbH. Secondly, the outstanding, highly skilled support received from Heidelberg Druckmaschinen AG," says Donner.
Quick return on investment
After six months of operation, Donner & Nagel made a costs-benefit analysis of the new workflow solution. "Assuming full utilization of the Prinect Printready workflow, an extremely conservative estimate of costs and benefits indicates that we will achieve payback of the investment within 13 months," says Zukunft, summarizing the economic aspects of the upgrade. "Realistically, any business of our size and structure should be able to recover its investment in a Heidelberg Prinect Printready system in under a year."
To maximize acceptance, management opted to introduce the new workflow solution using a train-the-trainer approach. First of all, Heidelberg trained a select group of key users from Donner & Nagel in using Prinect. Then these key users trained their colleagues. "We chose this approach to integrate the new solution into operations as quickly and seamlessly as possible," explains Zukunft. "For employees, the main benefit of the new workflow is increased reliability in production. Acceptance grew as they noticed that the Prinect workflow improves their success in the job. Not to mention the fact that there's now much less need for overtime."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Donner & Nagel GmbH, Essen
Boasting over 25 years as a quality service provider, Donner & Nagel's 32-strong workforce today comple-
ments its traditional prepress spectrum with comprehensive, up-to-date print data and color management expertise. To cover the accompanying IT requirements, its subsidiary Mark 5 GmbH provides a full range of servers and database and storage infrastructures.
|
|
|