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 Ampersand Printing, from Guelph, (Toronto) Canada, achieved second place in the world-wide 2007 CIP4/JDF "CIPPI Award" in the category "Biggest improvement in
efficiency and customer responsiveness as a result of process automation." |
| With regard to Ampersand's explicit strategy, Vice President and Production Manager Damian McDonald explains the objectives for implementing automation technologies as
follows: "With both foreign market influences as well as our current domestic capacities, anyone in this industry knows that pricing is sharp and our market is extremely
competitive. Our stance is that if we are to continue to provide our customers with the level of quality we are currently achieving, as well as remain competitive,
we must automate the process, make it as streamlined as possible and minimize errors." His crystal clear conclusion: "The only way to achieve this goal is through
process automation with systems that allow best possible JDF connectivity." |
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James E. Harvey, Executive Director of CIP4 Organization, presented the CIPPI Award to Ampersand's Vice President Damian McDonald who is being honored at the
event along with Ampersand's supporting vendors. |
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| Retrospectively, Damian describes: "We began our search for an adequate system with no specific criteria in mind. We did, however, know that we wanted to adopt
an 'enter once - use many' means of managing information." After a period of thorough investigation Ampersand finally decided on HIFLEX Management Information System
(HIFLEX MIS) at Graph Expo 2005. They introduced HIFLEX for order management, production planning and shop floor data collection beginning of November 2005. The JDF
implementation began in April 2006 and today includes a seamless integration between business processes, prepress and postpress (cutting machine) production processes. |
| Their award-winning implementation includes the HIFLEX MIS with high level JDF connectivity to Kodak Prinergy and their Heidelberg Polar Cutter. In this advanced and
cutting edge workflow, prepress receives JDF job and customer data as well as "JDF StrippingParams" directly from HIFLEX MIS that is generated from each estimate.
Additionally, the cutting parameters are extracted from prepress into a separate file containing JDF for postpress. The bottom line of this integration is the
significantly improved automation over traditional methods, key to Ampersand's success and to their winning the highly sought after CIP4 CIPPI Award. |
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HIFLEX monitors JMF events provided by Kodak Prinergy (approval status and prepress operations such as plates done,
page proofs done, form proofs done) including a thumbnail previews of pages from the prepress system. Click on a page loads the thumbnail-preview of the
original PDF. Clicking on the preview opens the PDF in Acrobat. |
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Using JMF, HIFLEX also receives info from Prinergy on whether an event is chargeable or non-chargeable, including any comments the prepress operator added
into Prinergy. The screenshot from HIFLEX Prepress Window shows the list of chargeable and non chargeable items. The box "Cost:" displays the cost bookings
belonging to the selected row above. |
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Screenshots from Heidelberg Polar Compucut showing the visualization of the press sheet a) before and b) after the cutting program has been
generated from the JDF file. |
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| Improvements in efficiency include:
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| In the first period after implementation (2006 compared to 2005) Ampersand realized a turnover increase of 34.78%. The competitive advantage is a cash value (NPV)
of CAD 1,527,940.39, and the ROI is 1815.8% in five years (investment is paid back nearly 20 times). Please read more about the cost/benefit analysis here:
ROI of the JDF Implementation at Ampersand Printing |
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Ampersand Printing from Canada achieved second place in the CIP4 Awards in the category "Biggest improvement in efficiency and customer responsiveness as a
result of process automation" by realizing a seamless integration between business processes, prepress and postpress (cutting machine) production processes.
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| Damian McDonald, Vice President and Production Manager at Ampersand states: "The automation benefits utilized from both HIFLEX and Prinergy, paired with the ability
to integrate the two systems has placed us light years from where we were prior to our process efficiency enhancements. Moreover, efficiency enhancements we already
reached had a positive impact on customer responsiveness." And he adds "The truly exciting part is the fact that we have only scratched the surface and are just
beginning to realize the true benefits of this level of integrated automation." |
| CIP4 reported that according to the Review Panel's summary, Ampersand, "had the best understanding of where the hidden costs were with the workflow and how they were
recovering costs for authors alterations, other chargeable changes, time looking for tickets and so on. Ampersand provided an excellent explanation of the pains prior
to implementation and of how JDF helped to stop them." |
| The CIPPI Award Presentation for Ampersand took place on Monday, 12th November 2007 New Jersey, USA in presence of James E. Harvey, Executive Director of CIP4 Organization. |
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Persons from left to right: James E. Harvey - Executive Director CIP4, Karola Thews - International Marketing & Communications HIFLEX, Gary E. Marron - President
of HIFLEX Corp, Damian McDonald - Vice President Ampersand, Mike McDonald - President Ampersand, and Carolyn Klymko - Prepress Manager Ampersand, Mark
Wilton - Director of Partner Initiatives, Kodak, and Wayne Earl Sales Representative Heidelberg USA. |
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| The CIP4 CIPPI Award is done annually where companies can submit their case studies to the CIP4 organization that essentially explain where they were prior, what investments
they made in technology and systems and then what the consequences of these investments were and how they benefited. The CIPPI awards are determined by an independent and
international group of experts, the "CIPPI Award Review Panel" of judges without affiliation to any vendor, printer, prepress service or publisher. As the contest is
world-wide so the competition can be pretty stiff. |
 Ampersand is a second generation family-run company and offers full service offset printing. Currently 20 employees are kept busy with the production of high-end,
high-quality products. The wide spectrum of products ranges from short-run brochures and booklets to full color variable data products, high-end art prints using 10
micron stochastic screening, annual reports, flyers, catalogs, books and business cards. |
| Now in its 30th year, Ampersand positioned itself as one of the leading print service providers in Southern Ontario, Canada, and also achieved Forest Stewardship
Council (FSC) Certification in January 2007. |
| Ampersand was one of the first Canadian companies to install computer-to-plate (CTP) technology. In 2004 they started with Kodak Prinergy digital workflow and CTP
system with Staccato screening. The press room features a Komori 2-Color perfecting press, which is used primarily for bookwork, and a Mitsubishi 5-Color, which
is used for the balance of work. Moreover, an HP Indigo 5000 digital press was recently installed. The fully equipped bindery is outfitted with Heidelberg machines
(Polar Cutter, Stahl folder, Cylinder for matrix scores, micro perforating and die-cutting, Stitchmaster Saddle Stitching system, (equipped with both regular and
loop stitching heads), and with high speed laminating equipment, wire-o and plastic coil binding systems, high capacity paper drilling equipment as well as automated
clip sealing and shrink wrapping. HIFLEX MIS is used for order management and production planning. |
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