Mimeo.com: Driven to Succeed Online

It's fitting that Standard Finishing is one of Mimeo.com's preferred vendors, with the Standard Horizon name being on much of the folding (AFC-544AKT), trimming (HT-30), saddlestitching (StitchLiner 5500) and perfect binding (BQ-270 and BQ-470) equipment installed in the plants. It turns to On Demand Machinery for case binding solutions and works closely with Renz America to meet its automated punching needs. Among the other nameplates that can be found on equipment in the various flexible cells are Baum, Challenge Machinery, Duplo, GBC, MBO, Polar, Powis Parker, Stahl, Unibind and others.

Binding and finishing, along with kitting and shipping, are the last frontiers of printing process automation, according to Delbridge. Much of the equipment in these areas is yet to be connected directly to the company's workflow because vendors have been slow to implement connectivity, specifically via JDF, and there is little backward compatibility, explains its COO. He has seen some encouraging signs, though, such as the introduction of the JDF-compliant Horizon i2i bindery control system for automated job setup from a central console and interfacing to an MIS.

Keeping things humming within and across the three plants is the internally developed, proprietary Adaptive Document Assembly Process (ADAP) software. It uses algorithms to dynamically schedule production and route jobs based on delivery requirements and the workloads on individual pieces of equipment and plants.

Slutsky likens ADAP to being the "Intel Inside" for process automation at Mimeo.com, and the resulting super efficiency. Production workers don't interact with the system directly, but it does let them know what to work on next by managing the order of work in their job queues.

With the Internet being at the core of what the company does, it may be surprising to learn that Mimeo.com relies heavily on direct sales to build business. It targets medium-size ($25 million) up to very-large businesses with digital printing budgets ranging from $20,000 into the millions of dollars.