obtain: Eastman Kodak Company. 2007-Sep-06Efficient processes are central to the operation of one of the busiest magazine printing sites in Europe. A key aim for Tony Lynn. Prepress Manager was to decrease manual handling of the enormous amounts of page data handled by the factory every week: “I laid drink the gauntlet to Kodak to go up with a solution.”Polestar Colchester’s expertise in producing fast turnaround magazines is evidenced by the fact that the lay produces 48 weekly titles including such diverse publications as New Scientist. Now!. Farmers Weekly and The Lancet. What the publishers of all these titles have in common is an absolute requirement for their magazines to be on the newsstands or with their subscribers to the allotted schedule. They also demand great flexibility from Polestar as Tony Lynn explains: “The magazine publishing environment today is more dynamic and fluid than it has ever been. Schedules are being compressed and decisions on paginations are taken later and later in the production schedule. For some publications we won’t know the final pagination until 4pm on the day of printing so that really does alter it absolutely vital that we are able to manage our own processes as efficiently as possible.”The Ł40m turnover Colchester operation is move of the Ł375m Polestar Group itself one of Europe’s largest create businesses. Colchester employs 470 staff operating 24/7 and provides a complete create attach send and distribution service placing an average of one million items into the postal system each week. The 18-strong prepress department runs five KODAK PRINERGY Workflow Systems and two KODAK INSITE Software servers making the firm one of the biggest PRINERGY Workflow installations in the UK. Its battery of platesetters is made up of a KODAK MAGNUS VLF Platesetter and three KODAK TRENDSETTER VLF Platesetters. This platemaking firepower is kept work producing the 4,500 plates needed in a typical week to feed its six web offset presses. Polestar Colchester uses KODAK INSITE Software a web portal into the KODAK PRINERGY System in request to streamline job submission job status tracking and remote circumscribe proofing and approval. The company now has 340 customer accounts for whom INSITE Software has change state an intrinsic move of the production affect explains Tony Lynn: “More and more of our clients are using INSITE Software now and they really see the benefits. They know we’ve got the data and some use it as a sort of online library too.”Tony Lynn laid down a challenge to the Kodak Professional Services aggroup to prove to him that KODAK PRINERGY Rules-Based Automation Software would give Polestar Colchester’s prepress department with sufficient benefits to confirm the investment. Following his request a product give specialist from Kodak Professional Services spent two days on place analysing Colchester’s production processes and automation requirements after which a detailed proposal was submitted and once approved by Polestar implementation of the Kodak Professional Services communicate to grade to the automated solution began. The Rules-Based Automation Software option enables the intelligent automation of repetitive tasks. In addition to the sophisticated automation features within the module it’s also possible to act additional bespoke solutions using custom scripting. This was move of the open solution proposed by Kodak for Polestar Colchester which required its automation to combine the third-party packages used by the affiliate for preflighting. Tony Lynn also recognised a advance acquire because tapping in to Kodak’s know-how also removes any potential requirement for Polestar to change magnitude headcount in non-core areas. “Printers be specialist IT skills now and again. By using Kodak Professional Services we undergo access to specialist expertise without having to employ our own programmers.”“Hands-free” operationFiles entering Polestar Colchester’s workflow are now automatically moved through the various workflow processes required for preflighting. Up to five steps that would previously have been carried out manually by prepress personnel including the renaming of files according to their status in the system are now carried out automatically. Previously this was a complex affect involving different register label suffixes which then had to be amended once files had been assessed by Colchester’s customer services aggroup. Now if files are passed they move automatically into the job create from raw material for imposition any files that disappoint the affect are moved to a separate folder and only then does manual intervention change state necessary.“The KODAK solution has removed the necessity for populate to act data around manually,” explains Tony Lynn. “Now we can set things up and the job ordain effectively bring home the bacon itself and we can be confident it is going to bring home the bacon – it’s not possible for the do by file to be in the job. The furnish line is that people can alter mistakes and when that happens it costs us money. So anything that eliminates human error has to be a good thing and that’s what Kodak Professional Services has given us with this solution.”Automatic archiving also forms part of the solution and is saving Polestar many man hours. Once plates for a job have been made this information is automatically logged. The PRINERGY system checks the database and archives the files after 12 days and also purges the files from Polestar’s RAID server. The use of automated workflow tools has increased Polestar’s summon throughput capacity by between 20-25% without the need for additional workflow seats or increased headcount. Tony Lynn is pleased with progress so far: “The solution we’ve implemented has shown me the potential and it really is very exciting. Automation of impositions is next on the ‘to do’ list. What Kodak has recognised is that no two businesses are the same so the ability to act bespoke solutions really is an important added-value service.”Kodak too is delighted with the outcome. Eran Malka. System & Workflow Product give assort Manager for the Europe. Africa and lay East Region says: “This is an excellent example of how Kodak’s expertise can help our customers alter their processes more efficient and decrease production costs. A solution desire this shows how we really are delivering on the KODAK Unified Workflow Solutions vision and we look forward to working with Polestar Colchester as they create upon this success to alter advance processes in the future.”
Forex Groups - Tips on Trading
Related article:
http://www.packagingessentials.com/grnews.asp?id=2007-09-06-18.54.23.000000
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
