Commercial Print Automation at Printing Center USA
Automation is taking the printing industry by storm. Companies like Printing Center USA are taking the lead in commercial printing. How? They reduce errors, avoid repetitive manual tasks, and see their best prepress talents thrive.
Using the right software for the right process is key. Knowing how to get all processes integrated is often the biggest — and most overlooked — challenge.
“As we were growing, we were getting in more jobs,” says Kevin Evans, account services director at Printing Center USA. “On the flip side, the approval process made life increasingly difficult for our prepress staff. Files with mistakes, PDFs without bleed ... for every issue we had to get in touch with the client. With more than 40 jobs to process every day, these issues were a real burden. I’d much rather see my colleagues involved in creative flows than fixing minor errors all day.”
Printing Center USA decided that their preflight process needed to be further automated if they wanted to keep on growing.
That’s where Four Pees (Booth N872) came in. With the help of Four Pees’ US partner Apago, pdfToolbox Server CLI was installed. Main task? Perform all necessary quality checks and automatically fix most problems.
As no printing process is an island, an integration was made between pdfToolbox Server CLI, Enfocus (Booth C5937) Switch workflows, and Printing Center USA’s custom Web-to-print storefront.
“Automation saves money, but only when properly implemented,” says David Van Driessche, CTO at Four Pees print automation. “At Four Pees we don’t rest until our clients get the most value out of their existing print machinery. The time and efficiency gain achieved through process optimization and thorough software integration is phenomenal.”
how customer centricity benefits the whole organization
“Our customers have it easy now,” Evans continues. “They go to our website and check the type of product they want, e.g. a 16-page booklet, and upload their material. As soon as they place the order, pdfToolbox does a check on the spot. Any issues with the print file are flagged. The client uploads corrections, or lets the system automatically fix the mistakes. This works very well for recurring errors like missing bleed or page numbers. Our order intake and processing runs so much faster now. While our customers love the smooth process, the biggest fans of the automation could very well be our prepress technicians. They’re in the good flow once again.”
