 | | | | |
|
 Ampersand Printing is the first Canadian company, amid a new international contingent, to break into German domination of on-the-floor Job Definition Format (JDF) control.
Until this year, Deutschland printing companies had won nine out of a possible 12 CIPPI Awards since the competition first began in 2005, organized by the CIP4
specification body. Based in Guelph, Ampersand's second-place 2007 CIPPI in the category of Improvement in Efficiency and Customer Responsiveness
(one of only three categories) is highlighted by a 1815-percent ROI based over five years. |
| Two years ago, Ampersand became the second printer in Canada to install a Management Information System (MIS) from HIFLEX, a German tech company whose expensive
nerve-centre modules have now been involved in seven CIPPI wins. Ampersand's 26-year-old VP, Damian McDonald, initially applied HIFLEX through an estimating module
to eliminate paper dockets. As estimates are done, HIFLEX also simultaneously builds JDF data to create an entire process plan for the job, which simply waits for
the click of a button to initiate touch-less operation. |
| After HIFLEX creates the electronic docket and production specifications, and scans its Digital Planning Board to find when and how the job should be produced,
Kodak Prinergy software assigns a proper job imposition based on typical parameters like press destination and trim size. (Most printing companies, of course,
pay an operator to create an imposition template and then assign it to the job.) If files already sit within Prinergy then the software automatically RIPs and proofs the job. |
| "That is eliminating anywhere from half-an-hour to an hour-and-a-half per job. At $96 per hour - the cost of our prepress operator - that adds up in a hurry,"
says McDonald. "Not only are we creating jobs and assigning impositions in Prinergy, we are also getting automatic feedback from Prinergy (via Job Messaging Format).
So the prepress department does not need to do time sheets." |
|
|
|
| President of Ampersand Printing, Mike McDonald, and his son, Damian, vice president, have turned their early adoption of JDF workflow into 1815- percent return on investment |
|
|
| McDonald, who is a part owner of the company with his father Mike McDonald, reached a watershed moment a few months ago by establishing bidirectional JDF/JMF communication
between Prinergy and the $150,000 HIFLEX MIS. Drawing information back into the MIS allows Ampersand to understand the exact per-job costs of its primary production processes. |
| When the plating for a job is complete, for example, data feeds from Prinergy back to HIFLEX, which then books each of the four plates as a non-chargeable cost
against the job. If a second set of plates needs to be produced, Prinergy will ask why and then inform HIFLEX if this is a new chargeable item against the quote,
based on whether it was either a client or printer error. |
| "Previously it was extremely difficult to track chargeable corrections done on a job and this really helps. Usually by invoicing [one or two weeks later], prepress
has since worked on a couple hundred other jobs and they do not remember why they made four extra plates," says McDonald. "It gives us an excellent tool to
see why we ran over costs." |
| The 1815-percent ROI calculation noted in the CIPPI Award application is based on Ampersand's discovery of hidden workflow costs, from time saved by employees
finding instruction sets, the elimination of errors due to incorrect instructions, and streamlining production cost centres. To take this business strategy further,
Ampersand recently hired a cost-accounting consultant, William Herrott, who works under the new HIFLEX Streamlining Group. He previously produced the well-known cost
studies for the National Association of Printing Leadership (NAPL). |
| Through a forensic audit, Herrott calculated Ampersand's cost centres down to the penny and found areas where Ampersand did not have a very accurate understanding of its costs.
"We were making up for it elsewhere. On certain product types we are not as competitive as we thought, but on other product types we are very competitive,"
says McDonald. Hourly rates can be properly adjusted, but he can now compare estimated costs to actual costs on a per-job or productgroup basis. Using the
HIFLEX Shop Floor Data Collection module and an electronic docket, operators at any of the 10 consoles on the production floor enter their times while performing job instructions. |
| "It allows us to go to market with a very competitive price knowing with more certainty that we are going to make a profit margin that we want to, as well as
give our customer the best price." |
|
|
|
 |
The HIFLEX scheduling module, determined by a process plan created during estimation, allows Ampersand to precisely fulfil customer expectations about job delivery. |
|
|
| For better transparency with its customers, McDonald leverages the HIFLEX Digital Planning Board - "It is probably my favourite module." Replacing a Webbased
system, the Digital Planning Board provides a firm grip on the capacity and availability of Ampersand's press time (cost-centre time). A sales rep can tell a customer,
without doubt, whether a job can be done by Friday or if it needs to be pushed to Monday afternoon. |
| The success of Ampersand's HIFLEX implementation can also be measured by the financial benefits filtering down into sales. Its CIPPI application attributes a sales
turnover increase of 34.78 percent to HIFLEX. "Now that is obviously not completely caused by implementation of process automation. However, we did not
have to increase staff at all during that period to handle the extra turnover, which I think is fantastic," says McDonald. "To keep that in check is
going to make us more competitive in the marketplace." As he and his father investigate buying a new press, HIFLEX reports clearly show labour will continue
to be the largest cost in the operation. A new, fully JDF-enabled press would certainly fit well into the HIFLEX workflow. |
| "It is not plug-and-play, no matter what any vendor is going to try to tell you," says McDonald. Despite being engrossed in JDF for the past few years,
McDonald had difficulty creating a HIFLEX communication link between a Polar cutter and Prinergy, so that cutting information would automatically flow into the cutter.
While the JDF cutting data was created up front, an operator still had to pull the information over to the cutter. "We had a gentlemen come to Canada from Germany,
who was actually in town for something else. It ended up being a very small issue." Ampersand is now easily flowing both cutting and saddle-stitching data between
Prinergy and Compucut. |
| Based on the process plan established by HIFLEX during estimation, cutting data is accounted for in the imposition. "When a job is imposed and gets plated, the
system sends a JDF file to Compucut where it is processed and sent to the cutter," explains McDonald. "The only human intervention required is when the
cutter operator goes to cut that job. Instead of starting a new program on the cutter, he just looks in the memory banks and it is already there, with a job number
and customer name, selects it and starts cutting." |
| Ampersand recently started using HIFLEX to send job parameters to a couple of customers with JDF-enabled versions of Adobe Acrobat (version 7.0 and up).
The customer can then drop a PDF job file onto the Ampersand-supplied JDF file for a preliminary preflight against the quotation, based on parameters like trim size,
page count, or colours. This reduces the need to revise estimates or process plans, but there are huge intangible benefits in Ampersand integrating its workflow with
customers for pain-free production. |
| Despite the ease of digital presses, there is much more pressure to get jobs to the press as quickly as possible. McDonald found on average that it took far longer
than first expected to work a digital job through submission, RIPping and proofing before outputting on the HP Indigo. And the real world of commercial shortrun
colour work with electrophotography has little to do with the hands-free utopia of Web-to-print templates. "Automating the administrative portion is of great
value to a digital workflow," he explains. "In comparison, when you have a $150 digital job those administrative costs are probably the same as they are for
a $10,000 litho job." To tighten up the digital process plan, he used HIFLEX to automate paper supply ordering at estimation. |
| "With an MIS system as capable as HIFLEX, if you chose to go full-bore, which we did, you are completely throwing out your old workflow and revolutionizing it.
I think a lot of people who implement it go a bit slower, do a module here or there," says McDonald. "It is such an integral part of our workflow.
It is the brain of our business. This award is a nice pat on the back for sure." |
 PrintAction is one of the leading business magazines of the Canadian graphic arts industry. |
|
| |
