CIP4 Announces 2009 CIPPI Award Winners
CHICAGO—September 16, 2009—The International Cooperation for the Integration of the Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP4) organization announced the 2009 winners of the Jürgen Schönhut Memorial CIP4 International Print Production Innovation (CIPPI) Awards at a reception held at Print 2009. The CIPPI awards are given annually to the printer, publisher or prepress service who applies with the most compelling case study in three topical categories and four regions. The winners are:
• Best cost/benefit realization and improvement in efficiency as a result of process automation implementation
First Place — Druckerei Bauer GmbH of Pfedelbach, Germany
Second Place — Sirivatana Interprint Public Company Limited, of Bankok, Thialand
• Biggest improvement in quality production & customer responsiveness as a result of process automation
First Place — C. Maurer Druck und Verlag GmbH of Geislingen/Steige, Germany
Second Place — Druckerei Bauer GmbH of Pfedelbach, Germany
• Most innovative use of process automation technology in an implementation
Shinkosha Printing Company of Tokyo, Japan
• Small Business Process Automation Implementation of the Year
5Sept Etiquette of Courthézon, France
• Best Process Automation Implementation — Asia/Pacific
Shinkosha Printing Company of Tokyo, Japan
• Best Process Automation Implementation — Europe
Cloître Imprimeurs of Saint-Thonan, France
• Best Process Automation Implementation — North America
Ampersand Printing of Guelph, Ontario, Canada
• Best Process Automation Implementation — Emerging Markets
Emirates Printing Press of Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Any printer, prepress service or publisher may apply for the CIPPI awards. Awards are determined by a Review Panel of judges without affiliation to any vendor, printer, prepress service or publisher. The five Review Panel judges are:
• Patrick Cahuet of 1Prime|Concept (France)
• Stephan Jaeggi of PrePress-Consulting (Switzerland)
• Tetsuo Kimura of PrinTechno, Inc. (Japan)
• Bill Esler of Graphic Arts Monthly (USA)
• John Leininger of Clemson University (USA)
Among the winners, there were some interesting examples of JDF being used in areas that had not been seen before. “Druckerei Bauer is the first CIPPI Award winner to demonstrate that JDF can be successful in the packaging industry,” said judge John Leininger. “In addition to increasing production by 20% with JDF, they also showed that costing data can be captured in postpress packaging operations directly from machines via JMF.”
Another interesting winning case study was Shinkosha Printing Company, which extended automation to DTP operations and even allowed management to set up production equipment remotely from the office. “Shinkosha Printing took automation one step further than anyone before,” said Jim Harvey, executive director of CIP4. “No simple summary could do their case study justice, but the one point that stood out is that management wanted a totally digital workflow, done by the numbers, to mirror the mindset of young people coming into the industry … so they would see the business as a digital operation, from beginning to end.”
As the winner of in the “Biggest improvement in quality production & customer responsiveness as a result of process automation” category, C. Mauer Druck and Verlag extended their JDF automation beyond the plant with help from HIFLEX and Heidelberg. They included Star Publishing, a print buyer working for a “premium automotive manufacturer,” to provide just-in-time production of car manuals as part of the auto manufacturer’s supply chain.
Ramona Kaden, CEO of Star Publishing stated, “Errors are avoided before the expensive production process begins. Only 100% ready-to-print files and specifications are transmitted to production. By using JDF communication, the sources of errors are almost completely eliminated. This has an effect on: (1.) time―more orders are processed in a shorter time and lead time is significantly reduced; (2.) visibility―IT systems of different partners are talking to each other, which leads to better job tracking across company borders; and (3.) process workflow ― everything melds together, and the involved parties are efficiently connected.”
At the awards ceremony, Patrick Vreven, CEO of Gamsys and part of the winning Cloître Imprimeurs team that won the “Best Process Automation Implementation — Europe” award said that, “For Cloître the goal of the project wasn’t saving labor, but rather eliminating stress from the production process and making and impact on the environment. The improved workflow and automated data collection and reporting allows everyone to spend more time for better communication with customers, and even more time in training and professional development. More immediate information to the customer on job status means that Cloître can provide its customers with more flexibility in production for late changes. And better control of material usage means less waste and that is better for the environment.” Vreven went on to say, “For Cloître the best award is the return on investment and the ability to provide better service to their customers.”
The 2009 CIPPI award winning case studies may be downloaded from: www.cip4.org/cippi/ where you can also get more information on the CIPPI awards program. (Summaries of each winning case study can be found in the section below.)
About CIP4
CIP4 brings together vendors, consultants, and end-users in the print communications, graphic arts industry, and associated sectors, covering a variety of equipment, software, peripherals, and processes. Members participate in focused working groups to define the Job Definition Format (JDF), PrintTalk, and other standards relevant to process automation; to study user requirements; to test product interoperability; and to develop a range of JDF software development tools. Information on CIP4, including membership details, is available from the organization’s website: www.cip4.org. Or contact: Stefan Daun, Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics, +49 6151 155 575, secretariat@cip4.org. All content and ideas submitted to the CIP4 user groups and intellectual property rights subsisting therein shall become the exclusive property of CIP4.
About JDF
The Job Definition Format (JDF) is the industry specification designed to facilitate process automation and the integration of different applications and systems in and around the graphic arts industry. JDF also enables the integration of business management and job planning applications into the production workflow. JDF is based on the W3C’s Extensible Markup Language (XML), ensuring maximum interoperability between different platforms and ready interaction with Internet systems. More information is available at http://www.cip4.org/.
About the CIPPI Award Program
The CIPPI award is named after the late Jürgen Schönhut of the Fraunhofer Institute in Darmstadt Germany. Mr. Schönhut was a founding member of CIP4 whose contribution was instrumental in creating both CIP4, and its predecessor, the CIP3 Consortium. (For more information on Jürgen Schönhut please see his biography at http://www.cip4.org/cippi/juergen_schoenhut.html).
Summaries of 2009 CIPPI Award Winning Case Studies
Druckerei Bauer GmbH, Pfedelbach, Germany
• Specializes in folding cartons, displays and sales packaging
• Produces over 220 million folding cartons per year
• Objective: To expand JDF automation from labeling operations to folding carton production
• Supported by alphagrah team GmbH and Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG
Implementation Results:
• Pressroom, die-cutting shop, and gluing department are now equipped with the Prinect JDF workflow for the pressroom and folding carton processing section and are fully integrated.
• JDF workflow carries integrated job and presetting data to the machines and provides real-time feedback on status and operating data via JMF
• In order processing, time for preparing actual costing decreased by approximately 50%
• On the automatically connected folder gluer, times for job entry were cut from six minutes to one minute.
• ROI: 984% on a five year basis
Sirivatana Interprint Public Company Limited, Bangkok, Thailand
• South Asia’s largest printer with 4,000 Employees and $54 Million USD in sales.
• Supports all types of printing including labor intensive printing, such as pop-ups.
• Previously, information manually gathered, analyzed, transported and communicated by employees called “manual traffic teams” using 275 paper forms.
• Due to fast growth, many employees found it difficult to push jobs through each step of production.
• Supported by HIFLEX and Kodak
Implementation Results:
• Automatic Job Creation
• Better access to archived jobs / faster search and response times
• Automatic booking of material consumption
• Inventory checks of plates are accurate
• Prepress progress is visually represented for the CSR
• Up-to-the-minute plate status for the scheduler
• Cut 269 staff positions
• Decreased throughput times by 33%
• ROI: 1960% on a five year basis
C. Maurer Druck und Verlag GmbH, Geislingen/Steige, Germany
• Produces more than 4,000 automotive manual jobs per year,handled via fax, email and paper job tickets
• Partners with Star Publishing, a print buying agency, to solve just-in-time manufacturing of car manuals for automotive manufacturers
• Supported by Star Publishing, HIFLEX and Heidelberg
Implementation Results:
• JDF technology was viewed by both the auto manufacturer and Star Publishing as a means to increase visibility, reliability and the quality of processes.
• JDF used in both integration with customer as well as for internal production operations
• Star Publishing entered into a Service Level Agreement with a manufacturer specifying 4 days delivery on digital print jobs and ten days for offset jobs
• Star Publishing reported a 30% savings in both time and cost of production
• C. Maurer experienced a 20% savings in the cost of processing job orders
Shinkosha Printing Company, Tokyo, Japan
• Sales of 800 million yen in 2008 with 50 employees
• Prints medical books, engineering books and other academic books and magazines.
• Supported by OLIVE Inc., manroland Japan, Konica Minolta Graphic Imaging Japan
Objectives:
• Academic and Medical books can take 3 months to 20 years to produce, as authors make changes, often after long periods
• Errors, especially in medical books, can have dire legal and medical results
• Had to resolve 1 byte/2 byte language problem endemic to printing technology
Implementation Results:
• Achieved total compatibility with JDF-enabled equipment by 2-byte (Japanese) support by manroland’s PECOM Network in June 2008.
• Linked DTP operations to prepress via JDF with Konica Minolta’s Neostream
• Shinkosha can now track the progress of every task in the company, the operating status of all equipment and the occurrence and cause of problems from any location in real-time.
• Reduced average production time per job from 120 minutes to 70 minutes
• Machine presets can be performed in the office remotely
• Profit can only be gained when the printing machines are working, so the machines are not stopped
• Job sharing (load balance can be controlled) can be realized on multiple printing machines
5Sept Etiquette, Courthézon, France
• Produces labels for the food, wine and cosmetics industries
• Annual sales of ¤6.5m and employs 50 people
• Previously data transfer between customer service and prepress departments was entirely manual, resulting in double data entry and a high risk of errors.
• Supported by CERM and EskoArtwork
Implementation Results:
• Bidirectional (JDF/JMF) connection both on “product”-level (ex. administrative data, colors, barcode, time tracking, and approval status) and on “production-job” level (ex. step & repeat and status on plates).
• Breakeven of just four months on the project
“In the current financial year (June 2008 – May 2009), 9 of the 12 months of which have been greatly affected by the current financial crisis, our company turnover has increased. This is not attributable to an increase in our existing customer base, but by our capability to develop new markets thanks to our recognized quality of service. We have now reached a point where nearly all of the information in our MIS system is verified systematically, is reliable and whose quality is enhanced automatically. This integrated information allows us to develop new applications which may be simple at first sight, but very quickly add value to our company and our customers.” – Peter Wack, PDG, 5Sept Etiquette
Cloître Imprimeurs, Saint-Thonan, France
• Annual revenue of 12,000,000 ¤ with 115 people.
• Previously ran an average of 40 jobs per day using paper job tickets for every stage of production and plagued by loss of time by creating incomplete paper job ticket
• loss of time by communicating the jobs list to the different process
• risk of error by manual interpretation of technical information
• delay in updating the job status
• loss of time and of reliability when additional or revised instructions come in on a job from customer
• limited precision in raw material consumption and no control on make ready waste
• delay in cost management and invoicing because of a necessary control of manual data collection
• Supported by GamSys Software, Kodak, Komori, and Müller Martini
Implementation Results:
• Completely electronic job ticket
• Automatic communication between productions devices
• Standardization of production parameters without human interpretation
• Real-time job status updates and cost management
• Great flexibility in planning
• High level of precision in raw material consumption and make ready waste
• Savings of more than 30 minutes per job in processing time.
• Decrease on waste of materials (paper, plates, ink, chemical products) with a relevant impact on the environment.
Emirates Printing Press, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
• Previously had modern software and equipment from Kodak, Heidelberg, Enfocus, GMG, Komori, manroland, Muller Martini and Epson and yet:
• All job details were keyed in by the operator at each machine.
• Job costing information was captured manually
• Emirates had to resolve production bottlenecks to keep up with increased demand.
• Supported by Müller Martini and Technique
Implementation Results:
• JDF allows fully automatic setup of the machines, which provides significant labor savings and allows more scheduling flexibility, as make-ready is dramatically reduced so changing product sizes from job to job has much less impact.
• Automated all aspects of production (with some postpress operations remaining to be completed)
• Reduced administrative processing costs by 15 %
• Reduced cost of data collection by 90 %
• Reduced job cost processing by 10 %
• Reduced analytical reporting time by 75 %
Ampersand Printing, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
• 17 employees
• Services include variable digital printing and high quality printing with stochastic screening
• An excellent example of continuously evolving automation with …
• Automating prepress and MIS in 2006
• Extending JDF automation to postpress in 2007
• Extending JDF automation to press operations in 2008
• Supported by HIFLEX Corp. N.A., Mitsubishi Lithographic Presses, Kodak Graphic Communications Group, and Heidelberg
Implementation Results:
• First signature (1,200 per year) preparation was reduced by 34 minutes (16 minutes instead of 50 minutes).
• Following signatures (1,800 per year) preparation was reduced by 22 minutes (from 30 minutes to 8 minutes).
• Reduced work hours so much that Ampersand could eliminate complete shifts.
• Cut 400 sheets of waste per reprint signature
• ROI:6121.5% on a five year basis