EFI Hagen and JDF Automation Enable Double-Digit Growth for Finlay Printing
October 2007
|
FOSTER CITY, CA—Oct. 29, 2007—EFI, the world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation, today announced that Finlay Printing is growing its business by double-digits with fewer presses and employees than its competition by maximizing the use of EFI’s Hagen print MIS system and JDF automation.
Finlay Printing was founded by the Finlay brothers in Hartford, Conn., in 1876. In its 130th year of doing business, Finlay has about 90 employees and delivers revenues of $25 - $30 million by targeting customers in five vertical markets: education, corporate, retail point of sale, financial services, and design.
Living up to its tagline, Delivering Success, Finlay focuses its efforts on making its customers’ projects more profitable with complete turnkey project management from concept through delivery. “In order to successfully deliver against that promise we knew we had to introduce as much automation into the process as possible,” said Todd Kalagher, president of Finlay.
Finlay had been using EFI’s Hagen OA print MIS solution primarily for accounting. Kalagher’s team partnered with EFI to take greater advantage of their existing Hagen MIS and implement direct integration with Agfa platemaking and new MAN Roland presses. Kalagher also wanted to incorporate as many of his existing processes as possible to leverage the work that Finlay, a technology-driven innovator, had already done to streamline its workflow.
With the installation of two new, more automated presses and the Hagen implementation, Finlay’s pressroom was able to go from six presses to three. As it installed the new presses, Finlay also implemented shop floor, production, scheduling, shipping and more of the services available in Hagen to take full advantage of JDF. “Many of our processes, including things like scheduling and purchasing, were already based on forms,” said Kalagher. “This was important. Because Hagen is forms-based, it was relatively easy for us to migrate existing forms to the new system.”
Kalagher points out that in order to appropriately set up the presses, a plate scan is required, and Hagen became the central point from which data flows to and from the Agfa platesetter and the PECOM front-end controller for the scheduled MAN Roland press. “Our goal was to shorten our makeready times even further. With this new process, the press knows what the next job will be and can start preparing itself even before finishing the previous job by running inks up or down to accommodate lighter or heavier coverage.”
Impressive Results
Finlay Printing was founded by the Finlay brothers in Hartford, Conn., in 1876. In its 130th year of doing business, Finlay has about 90 employees and delivers revenues of $25 - $30 million by targeting customers in five vertical markets: education, corporate, retail point of sale, financial services, and design.
Living up to its tagline, Delivering Success, Finlay focuses its efforts on making its customers’ projects more profitable with complete turnkey project management from concept through delivery. “In order to successfully deliver against that promise we knew we had to introduce as much automation into the process as possible,” said Todd Kalagher, president of Finlay.
Finlay had been using EFI’s Hagen OA print MIS solution primarily for accounting. Kalagher’s team partnered with EFI to take greater advantage of their existing Hagen MIS and implement direct integration with Agfa platemaking and new MAN Roland presses. Kalagher also wanted to incorporate as many of his existing processes as possible to leverage the work that Finlay, a technology-driven innovator, had already done to streamline its workflow.
With the installation of two new, more automated presses and the Hagen implementation, Finlay’s pressroom was able to go from six presses to three. As it installed the new presses, Finlay also implemented shop floor, production, scheduling, shipping and more of the services available in Hagen to take full advantage of JDF. “Many of our processes, including things like scheduling and purchasing, were already based on forms,” said Kalagher. “This was important. Because Hagen is forms-based, it was relatively easy for us to migrate existing forms to the new system.”
Kalagher points out that in order to appropriately set up the presses, a plate scan is required, and Hagen became the central point from which data flows to and from the Agfa platesetter and the PECOM front-end controller for the scheduled MAN Roland press. “Our goal was to shorten our makeready times even further. With this new process, the press knows what the next job will be and can start preparing itself even before finishing the previous job by running inks up or down to accommodate lighter or heavier coverage.”
Impressive Results
Companies Mentioned:
 |
|
|
