Online orders now account for about 35% of the £4.5m turnover and the volume has prompted the company to install HP’s Production Center scheduling and management system to automate the job handling.
Digital print facilities currently include three HP Indigo presses, a 5000, a 5500 and a remanufactured 7R that was installed last November. A fourth HP Indigo will be added next year. There are also Ricoh 1357ex and MP9000 monochrome toner printers and a range of large-format inkjets including roll-fed solvent and flatbed UV machines. There are extensive finishing, binding and direct mail facilities.
“The idea behind DigitalPrinting.co.uk was to expand our marketplace to the whole of the UK,” says chief executive Gary White. “As it has been so successful we decided to launch TradeDigitalPrint.co.uk for the UK trade market as well.”
DigitalPrinting.co.uk offers a range of stationery, fliers, brochures, books with various bindings, folders and labels, plus wide-format products such as indoor and outdoor posters, banners and backlit graphics. The trade offerings are much the same, but also include unfinished flat sheets.
The two online operations use bespoke software developed especially for them, says White, though Northside itself uses a DDS Accura MIS and a RedTie web-to-print system.
“Typically we are dealing with up to 5,000 jobs per month with slight seasonal variations,” says White. “Production Center is invaluable to us as we have so many jobs per day it would be nearly impossible to keep track of them all manually. It is integral in our strive for efficiency and responsible automation.”
The Production Center system was installed in January. “We had about 50% of jobs going through it by April. It took from April to August to get 97% of jobs flowing through. Obviously like most print service providers we have work coming from a lot of manual and online sources so it just took a while.”
How does it work?
White explains the job workflow from reception to dispatch: “All files that come to us for print, no matter whether the original source is online or offline, enter Enfocus Switch as artwork and XML data files.” Switch is a highly customisable file handling system that lets users build automated workflows including automated processing sequences.
“This essentially pre-presses all the files and checks file integrity, etc. Switch then remaps all the info and passes the required files and JDF to Production Center for scheduling.
“The production path has been set up to work backwards from the dispatch date and time,” White continues. “So Production Center sorts the running order of all jobs in all departments, including finishing and dispatch. If a job is ever ‘behind’ the whole team knows instantly as it is visible on the many screens around our production facility.”
Production Center overseas the work as it passes through the various stages. “When a job passes through Production Center it communicates directly with Enfocus Switch while the job is still a digital asset, ie not printed yet,” says White. “Then when that stage is complete it will be registered by Production Center and moved into the next stage, for example the Indigo work centre. It passes info about the job as JDF directly to the presses, then info is sent back to Production Center when the job has finished printing. That task is then registered as completed and it is moved into finishing.
“In finishing, each process is currently scanned manually to update Production Center, but we are about to start testing JDF with some operations. Finally, when the job is dispatched, it is manually scanned to update Production Center to record that it is completed.”
The company’s decision to invest in this sort of system had been on the cards for some time, says White:“Even in 2014 I always knew we were going to need some sort of a tracking and job management system. I visited Precision Printing and looked at OneFlow, which I think is fantastic, but it wasn’t a fit for what we actually do. I also looked at Production Center around the same time but it was in its infancy and wouldn’t have helped us. So we wrote our own in-house system to keep us going until the right product was developed.
“In the intervening period HP developed Production Center and all of a sudden it became of interest again. In late 2015, I was convinced it would be the right solution for us. It was a natural fit with the HP Indigo presses, as it’s designed specifically to work with them. It also has ready integration with Switch, in which we have invested heavily in terms of man hours.”
The company is also starting to use the new HP PrintOS, which is a cloud-based ‘point of integration’ that supports approved print-related apps. “We have HP PrintOS and are currently working with HP to see how best to utilise its many features for our business,” White says. “We have it linked to Production Center but its main use at the moment is to monitor the Indigo presses in terms of productivity and maintenance.”
Bespoke setup
White says initialising the bespoke setup went smoothly although there was a lot to get done. “HP was fantastic at helping us to set up. They understand that this is not a one-size-fits-all, and the Production Center solution has to be flexible. We did buy it on a ‘try before you buy’ and were given five months to try it out for a fee, but I don’t know if HP still offers this.
“We are still fully integrating Production Center into production as there is a lot of information to collect and pass on for each work centre. We expect to have full integration within the next two months.”
“It gives us full visibility of all jobs currently in production,” White says. “Anyone in the company can find a job’s location instantly from their browser. This is massively more efficient and saves a lot of time. We have fewer errors as jobs are controlled centrally and all changes are instantly global. The scheduling is live and constantly updates. All this naturally adds efficiency to the whole process.”
Any issues? Nothing major, he feels. “Like everything I would have liked the integration to have been faster, but with a nearly bespoke offering from HP it just takes time. Which I know my peers and I are not the greatest at accepting!
“Another small issue which has not yet been updated is the date format within Production Center. This is currently American – MM/DD instead of UK DD/MM – so selecting a date from our UK calendar doesn’t work – hopefully this will be sorted in the next update from HP.”
The only other thing he’d like the system to offer is thumbnail previews of live jobs.
Overall White has no qualms about the investment: “It’s great for giving an overview of all the jobs in production that anyone can interact with to get the job out by deadline.”
So, would he buy it again? “Yes,” he says. “The foundations are now well and truly in place and I have no doubt it will continue to evolve into an even more powerful tool. And combined with PrintOS I think there are exciting times ahead!”
SPECIFICATIONS
This is a job management and production automation system within HP’s SmartStream family of print-related file handling, production and administration systems.
It’s designed to process high volumes of jobs, linking to web portals, MIS systems, and pre-press tools, then automatically routing work to multiple production platforms, including HP Indigo and HP Inkjet Web digital presses, non-HP digital presses, offset presses, finishing equipment, and manual work centres.
Production optimisation lets similar jobs be grouped and batched for more efficient handling. Jobs are tracked through production using JDF/JMF. Live status dashboards can be displayed on screens throughout the workplace.
Pricefrom around £42,500
Contact HP 01344 363368 www.hp.com
Company profile
DigitalPrinting.co.uk and TradeDigitalPrint.co.uk are online printed product ordering sites set up by Northside Graphics of Belfast, which claims to have been Northern Ireland’s first digital printer. Northside was established in 1988 and merged with PodPrint in 2010. Northside acquired another Belfast printer, Bradbury Graphics, in 2011, All production is now in a single 1,200m2 site.
DigitalPrinting.co.uk was set up in 2013. Once established this was followed by TradeDigitalPrint.co.uk in July 2016. On 8 June this year DigitalPrinting.co.uk was awarded ‘Best Use of eCommerce’ at the Digital DNA Awards in Belfast.
The company employs 37 people including internal and external sales staff and has a turnover this year of about £4.5m. Some 35% of turnover comes in through the online sites.
Why it was bought...
In order to run at optimal efficiency, White knew that DigitalPrinting.co.uk needed some sort job management system but had not found one that ticked all the boxes, until he came across Production Center.
How it has performed...
The system has given White much greater oversight on his whole operation. “It has helped put some slack back into the system through efficiency,” he adds. “Our growth plans will also be easier to achieve with Production Center.”
A particular benefit has been greater clarity as jobs go through, he adds: “We have been able to adopt ‘paperless’ job sheets for some of our W2P systems, so all updates are in 100% real time in Production Center.”
