On 22 June, Telford-based PCP will add EFI's dynamic scheduling tool, PrintFlow, to its existing Hagen MIS, Prograph production planning and EFI Auto-Count shop floor data collection tools.

The installation is a coup for EFI, which has struggled for years to establish a foothold in the European market, despite dominating in the US.

Marc Olin, senior vice president of EFI's Advanced Professional Print Software (APPS) division, said: "Although we are the dominant provider of fully integrated MIS solutions to the printing market in the US, to date we have not enjoyed the same success in Europe.

"However, in PCP we now have our first completely integrated European success to go along with a number of standalone MIS deployments we have in the UK, Poland, Slovenia and Germany."

PCP managing director Alex Evans said his initial misgivings about the level of support that EFI would be able to offer gave way to satisfaction following the October installation of EFI's Hagen, Prograph and Auto-Count products.

"We were initially concerned that, as Europe is a rather newer market for EFI, the level of support they were going to provide us might not be up to the level of that received by one of their US customers," he said.

"We need not have worried though as the support we've received from EFI has been excellent. EFI worked closely with us to overcome the issues that were bound to arise in such a major transition."

PCP said that an integrated MIS was crucial to facilitating lean manufacturing and thereby safeguarding the long-term future of the company.

Evans said: "There's no doubt that for any printing organisation to move ahead and remain financially viable for the long-term, a fully integrated MIS is needed to drive a lean manufacturing business model."