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 Executive Summary - Kraft Druck installed a HIFLEX Print Management Information
System (Print MIS) in order to improve process automation. Recently, they implemented
electronic scheduling and JDF between MIS, Prepress and Press. |
This resulted in both cash benefits and many "soft" benefits that improved
customer satisfaction:
This case study examines the benefits of the implementation, which resulted in a Return
on Investment (ROI) of 447%. The Net Present Value (NPV) of this investment is $768,360.
Prior to the implementation of JDF, Kraft had already realized significant savings:
one of the most notable being a reduction in error costs of $275K a year, through
improved quality management.
Kraft Druck and HIFLEX were the winners of the 2005 CIPPI award for the biggest
improvement in efficiency and customer responsiveness as a result of process automation. |
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Stefan Reichhart (Hiflex), Eugen Stein (MAN Roland), Werner Kraft (Kraft Druck),
Ursula Voss-Eiden (Kodak), Stefan Daun (CIP4) |
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Kraft Druck is a full service sheet-fed offset printer, producing high-end commercial
publications, posters, and weekly and monthly publications for the high quality end of
the print market.
Kraft Druck has been working with the HIFLEX management information system (MIS) since 1995.
The system is used for order management (administrative processing, estimating, job costing,
invoicing, production planning, and shop floor data collection. The reason for purchasing
the HIFLEX system was to objectively measure costs and performance.
Creo’s Prinergy PDF workflow is used in prepress, and the three MAN Roland 40" presses
are connected to the PECOM management system. |
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Prior to the implementation, there were several factors the Kraft Druck wanted to improve:
Key goals for networking of the production process were to:
Kraft Druck’s ROI target was less than 2 years. |
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| The screenshot shows the thumbnail-preview of a page in HIFLEX MIS. A click on a page in the right-hand pane opens the preview in the center pane. A click on the preview itself opens the PDF file in Acrobat. At the bottom of the page, the structure of the imposition scheme is shown |
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Implementation took place over a period of just over one year. This was due to the fact
that implementation of JDF is usually best done in steps, and Kraft was an early-adopter of
JDF. This meant that there were many changes (and improvements) in both the JDF specification
and each of the vendors’ software feature sets. |
The Return on Investment (ROI) of the JDF implementation at Kraft Druck is 447% over five
years. The Net Present Value (NPV) is $783,360 which equals an Internal Rate of Return (IRR)
of 168%.
Increased Production
Production has increased by $128,230 per year
Press Room
The direct effect of the JDF connectivity project was an increase in productive hours (print
run hours) +9.6%. A further benefit that Thomas Brickwedde recognized is that new employees
working on the presses are trained much faster, and become much more productive much sooner.
This is a result of the automatic transfer of data from the HIFLEX MIS to the press, which
replaces the time-consuming and error-prone manual entries.
Prepress
The JDF connectivity between HIFLEX and Creo saves prepress operators about 30 minutes a day
in Shop Floor Data Collection and another 30 minutes for job creation. Process automation
improved the allocation of plates against orders from 96% up to virtually 100%, and rendered
time-consuming investigations obsolete (formerly: a minimum of 4 hours per month were
consumed with this task by the head of prepress). The working time saved from these
improvements in pre-press amounts to $17,559 per year.
Scheduling
The previous full-time scheduler spends just 20% of his time actively performing scheduling;
therefore, a wage bill reduction by 0.8 persons is used as a basis for the calculation of the
ROI. The remaining 80% of the scheduler’s time is spent as a CSR. |
When calculating the ROI, NPV and IRR, the following soft factors were not taken into
account.
Invoicing and Cashflow
Invoicing has become more precise and much faster, since all chargeable and non-chargeable
processes are automatically entered into the MIS. Since the consumed materials are now
automatically booked (with 100% accuracy) against the job, the CSR can generate invoices
at the press of a button. This substantial improvement increases the cash liquidity
because customers pay earlier, since they receive their invoices earlier. The fact that
the invoices are going out earlier does not disturb their customers: on the contrary, it
is seen positively as professional order management.
Thomas Brickwedde notes: "JDF has enhanced our visibility into the production process.
HIFLEX, which is the working tool of the CSR, displays the current job status and the
products produced with an update interval of one minute. When customers call to check
on the progress of their orders, the CSR’s can respond immediately with detailed and
accurate information. This instantaneous access to the job status is invaluable when
customers request modifications. In such a case, the CSR can tell the customer, for
example, whether or not the modification would be chargeable (e.g. because the plates
have already been exposed). Our customers have come to appreciate this a great deal.
They have the feeling that their jobs are the most important for us, and that their
print jobs are in best hands. The fact that the CSR’s and the scheduler can now even
see customer-delivered files and approval state, has improved transparency and increased
our flexibility through a widened planning horizon." |
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Click here to read about more CIPPI Awards won by Hiflex and its customers
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CIP4 is an international consortium for the integration of processes in prepress, press and postpress. The CIP4 organization defines and maintains the JDF specification. Hiflex has been a full member of the CIP4 organization since January 2002. |
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