At the close of the presentation, there is a pause as the assembled company of printers takes in what it has just been told. We are at Heidelberg Northern Division’s Tamworth headquarters for an open house event and the nub of the matter has clearly come as something of a revelation to some present: litho printers don’t need to invest in a digital press to access the growing web-to-print (W2P) market, they can instead gang jobs to fill spare capacity on their existing litho kit.

The secret to this, as always, is software. Heidelberg, with partners Tharstern and RedTie, has, for "the first time", linked W2P, MIS and workflow platforms as a commercially available off-the-shelf solution. This, the company says, enables litho printers to take W2P orders, gang them, and push them through with, thanks to real-time cost-per-copy analysis, provable efficiency – you don’t need a digital press, just fill up your litho press with W2P work offered as a service latched on to your existing business.

While this may sound appealingly simple, it has been tried before and it has not always been an unmitigated success. Some printers who have already gone down the integrated W2P ganging software route, using a bespoke software solution, have reported problems, particularly when it comes to finishing. Also, while ganging jobs may be cheaper, there are other elements than cost to consider. Some even argue that the sort of outlay required for an integrated W2P software solution is excessive, if you’re only using it part-time.

Massive potential
That said, the system Heidelberg and its partners have built is certainly worth a look. The process began in August 2010 when Lance O’Connell, business executive for Prinect workflow and CTP at Heidelberg, got together with Tharstern and RedTie to discuss how such a system might work.

"We came to the conclusion that there was massive potential in taking W2P orders and using them to fill existing capacity on litho presses," explains O’Connell. "But that led us to a question: how on earth can we get those jobs quickly and easily from the internet to a plate?"

The solution is a clever piece of integration that takes advantage of pre-existing technologies  – job ganging, W2P, MIS and workflow tools – and links them up. Its real strength, though, is that it enables not only fast and efficient printing – essential in the quick delivery time world of W2P – but also real-time cost analysis that allows a printer to identify the cheapest print option. It’s the cost-per-copy analysis that unearthed the fact that a ganged sheet of jobs printed litho is often cheaper than producing the jobs individually on a digital machine. And that was a surprise to everyone, according to Keith McMurtrie, managing director at Tharstern.

"The system helps you choose similar jobs to gang, based on stock or colour profile for example, but the printer gets the final decision based on cost-per-copy analysis," he explains. "When we tested the system it was a real surprise that time and time again ganged jobs on litho came out the cheapest option. It just shows that if you have unused capacity on your litho press, use that up with W2P and ganging before buying digital kit."

While this may be unique for an off-the-shelf product, it’s not the first time it has been tried, as O’Connell admits. A few printers, looking for the kind of interconnectability that would enable them to produce W2P work on litho presses, have taken the plunge and built their own software to do a similar thing. One such company is W2P printer Pixart Printing.

"We operate in a market where competitors are increasing, so we had to improve our efficiency," explains Matteo Rigamonti, chief executive at Pixart Printing. "This is difficult with traditional offset, as you have to consider the time and the cost of makereadies. The solution we found was ganging and for that to work you need software to quickly calculate five variables: delivery time, size, run length, kind of paper and paper weight.

"We knew there were a couple of solutions available, but our whole workflow is too complicated and so any solution other than in-house development would have been more expensive."

Rigamonti says he spent somewhere between €100,000 (£87,000) and €200,000 on the system that knitted together his W2P platform, workflow and the self-built Uragano ganging software. The impact, however, has been significant. The breakeven point between litho and digital is down to run lengths below 400. That would fall even further – to around 200 – if the company  goes ahead with the purchase of another Komori or Heidelberg litho press, as it is considering.

"The software has enabled us to almost double our production and our turnover, and improve margins," he reveals.
He does, however, have a problem: with so many different-sized jobs on the ganged sheet, the finishing department is under a lot of pressure. The guillotine has to be programmed with what can run into hundreds of cuts and then, once separated, each job could require a different post-press process to be applied.

Start to finish
So, there has to be a way of tracking those individual jobs after they are separated, or efficiency will falter. To solve the problem, Rigamonti is working with Heidelberg to make its guillotines work with JDF instructions. However, Pixart Printing’s UK partner, Precision Printing, came up with a different solution.

"Finishing really can be the key to success for W2P," reveals Gary Peeling, managing director at Precision Printing. "With ganged jobs, you can have several different finishing options required, so we developed our own OneFlow software to drive the work through."

The overall ganged job is treated and barcoded as a single job, but once the different elements are separated, individual virtual job tickets are created for each item. These separate items then appear in the workflow queues of the finishing apparatus.

"This is important as it means we can ensure the timely and appropriate finishing of each individual job item," says Peeling. "This is really the secret source that enables W2P systems to work."

At the Heidelberg event, the finishing solution was JDF-enabled finishing kit and CompuCut, which meant finishing was automated and the MIS included the post-press time in its cost-per-copy analysis. The problem, perhaps, is that not many people can afford, or have the inclination, to go down the fully integrated JDF route, nor build their own software, but without that integration the expense of solutions to the front-end seems unbalanced as the benefits of that spend would be curtailed.

Another problem with the system is the nature of ganged work. On the solution brought out by the Heidelberg partners, run lengths as diverse as 50 and 500 can be put together, and despite that meaning 450 overs on the short-run job, the total cost of the gang is cheaper than printing that short-run job digitally.

But in the environmentally responsible era that we live in, 450 overs is going to be seen by many people as a waste of paper. One of those people is Precision Printing’s Peeling. When he gangs work, he will always strive to get run lengths as close as possible, and that’s not just because he’s up on his green issues.

"Where there’s waste, there’s cost – environmentally and economically," he says.

Tharstern’s McMurtrie argues it comes down to perspective. He says you can build in a filter so the created ganging list would exclude jobs that would create a pre-set number of overs (say, 50 or more), but he says the term "waste" can be misleading.

"Overs can be put in stock and when the repeat order comes in again you can use that stock and effectively produce something with 100% margin," he explains. "Okay, if it is variable data, then you can’t do this, but if it is repeat work, and that’s often the case with W2P, then it is not waste. In the end, it depends on your perspective."

Weighing the costs
The same could be applied to the idea of part-time W2P as a whole. As we have seen, gearing your operation for fully integrated W2P is an expensive business, but many argue that that expense is necessary to get any value out of moving into W2P.

However, Norman Revill, managing director Manroland GB, believes the outlay for the kind of system Heidelberg and its partners are promoting, or that Pixart Printing has built for itself, is only viable if you are going to restructure your whole business to be a W2P operation. If you are only looking to do it part-time, he says, the cost will be prohibitive.

"If you are going to make W2P work in the way these software solutions operate, you would have to go on a massive investment programme and restructure your whole business to fit that," he claims. "People just don’t have the cash for that at the moment. For those just looking to do a bit of W2P on the side, it is much better to just invest in a W2P platform, not go all the way with a system that would require extensive restructuring."

It’s true that to properly automate your W2P business and get the value out of it is an expensive business, but both Pixart and Precision Printing say the return on their software investments was extremely quick. Also, the expense of this type of software will, in most cases, be less than the price of a digital press. And so with an expanding W2P market and with many litho printers wondering what to do with excess capacity, despite the costs involved, it’s likely many companies will take the plunge. Whether that spend proves excessive we shall have to wait and see.