In today’s market, pricing pressures are intense and profit growth is hard to find. Printers, prepress services, in-house graphics departments, and others are seeking a clear path to streamline workflows, reduce costs, and enhance profitability—and EFI® believes that
Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) is that path. The goal of this whitepaper is to explain how, by implementing CIM using the open JDF standard from CIP4, printers can turn these challenges facing the industry into real opportunities for success.

CIM is the application of computerization to seamlessly integrate the flow of production instructions throughout the print workflow—reducing wasted time, labor, and material—and to automate or eliminate inefficient steps. While CIM has been a cornerstone for many manufacturing industries since the late 1970s, until recently it has been difficult to implement CIM in print manufacturing. Printing is the ultimate form of custom manufacturing—no other industry retools its production line for every job ordered (e.g., changing paper, ink, plates, bindery configuration, layout, etc.) Despite the need for flexibility, and the wide range of input materials that print customers bring to the manufacturing process, there are indisputable trends facing printers today that make the adoption of CIM concepts imperative. These trends include:

• Shorter runs, greater job complexity, and customers demanding shorter turnaround times make it necessary to optimize equipment and staff utilization for maximum throughput and cycle time reduction.

• Relatively slow print market growth and increasing competitive price pressures are driving print service providers to offer new, diverse services in addition to finding new ways to cut costs and improve profitability.

• Print shops are continuing to add an increasing number of devices with embedded electronic controllers that allow them to be integrated with other devices;

• The wide adoption of CTP (Computer to Plate) printing, digital printing and digital proofing, as well as standard file formats, now makes it possible to apply CIM to print production workflow.

These trends can be considered challenges or they can be opportunities for those printing companies who embrace the
application of CIM technologies to improve their performance, profitability and customer relationships.

CHALLENGE:
“My customers are extremely talented professional artists and they’re perfectionists; Edition One Studios requires an intuitive workflow solution that creates perfect professional photo prints.”—Ben Zlotkin, Owner, Edition One Studios
Edition One Studios, located in Berkeley, Calif., provides custom photo books for professional photographers, art education organizations and professional artists, a growing market with needs that are not met by traditional printing and binding services. The firm offers in-house imaging, layout, printing, case-making and binding capabilities for their clients, who demand much greater flexibility and color quality offered by online, template-based photo book makers. Clients benefit from Edition One Studio’s photographic and color expertise, and commitment to quality materials and production.

Ben Zlotkin founded Edition One Studios based on a need of his own. At the completion of his Masters of Fine Arts degree in Photography, Zlotkin wanted to showcase his photography in book form. He wanted the printed images to match his vision for every photo, and he wasn’t happy with the book making options available. He knew that his visual arts colleagues must be experiencing the same dissatisfaction and decided to create a business to address the market’s need. Focusing on a particular niche, Edition One Studios would take advantage of the growing photo book market, which research analyst firm InfoTrends reports increased by 166 percent in 2007.

Among his first steps was determining what technology solutions would deliver the high quality photo output required for his demanding targetmarket. He is a Mac devotee and projected that the vast majority of his clients would be, too. With whatever digital output device he chose, he required an intuitive, Mac-based color management and color quality assurance workflow to ensure the highest quality production.

EFI is an important business partner for Zlotkin, helping to establish and maintain Edition One Studios’ stellar reputation among professional photographers. Zlotkin chose Splash, the unique Mac OS X-based workflow solution, and then its availability on the Xerox digital printer drove his choice of engine. Zlotkin and his staff, all artists, photographers and writers themselves, achieve high color management and color quality levels using Splash’s expert color management tools in a familiar Mac interface. Edition One Studios has deployed Splash from the very start of the business, and has integrated the award-winning EFI Color Profiler Suite profiling solution. With an intuitive interface, seamless integration into Edition One Studios’ operations, and extensive functionality, Color Profiler Suite ensures total color quality control in the firm’s photo printing workflow.

CIM is the application of computerization to seamlessly integrate the flow of production instructions throughout the print workflow—reducing wasted time, labor, and material—and to automate or eliminate inefficient steps. While CIM has been a cornerstone for many manufacturing industries since the late 1970s, until recently it has been difficult to implement CIM in print manufacturing. Printing is the ultimate form of custom manufacturing—no other industry retools its production line for every job ordered (e.g., changing paper, ink, plates, bindery configuration, layout, etc.) Despite the need for flexibility, and the wide range of input materials that print customers bring to the manufacturing process, there are indisputable trends  facing printers today that make the adoption of CIM concepts imperative. These trends include:

• Shorter runs, greater job complexity, and customers demanding shorter turnaround times make it necessary to optimize equipment and staff utilization for maximum throughput and cycle time reduction.
• Relatively slow print market growth and increasing competitive price pressures are driving print service providers to offer new, diverse services in addition to finding new ways to cut costs and improve profitability.
• Print shops are continuing to add an increasing number of devices with embedded electronic controllers that allow them to be integrated with other devices;
• The wide adoption of CTP (Computer to Plate) printing, digital printing and digital proofing, as well as standard file formats, now makes it possible to apply CIM to print production workflow.

These trends can be considered challenges or they can be opportunities for those printing companies who embrace the application of CIM technologies to improve their performance, profitability and customer relationships.

In choosing a proofing solution that could effectively operate across multiple plants, Comart investigated a wide range of alternatives. Comart prints to ISO standards as well as its own rigorous internal standards, producing printed pieces ranging in size from postage stamp to building wrap, and clients want consistency both across all elements of each individual campaign and from campaign
to campaign. But Comart also needed an affordable solution. “Although there are some great solutions out there,” says Rane, “most are quite expensive.
We found the price/performance of EFI Colorproof XF to be the best in the
market.”

Comart installed EFI Colorproof XF in its Mumbai plant in May of 2007. Rane
says, “We serve a number of demanding international brands, including L’Oreal,
Zodiac Clothing, Kingfisher and FCUK, in our key advertising, publishing and
packaging markets. Our stringent internal color standards and our compliance
with ISO standards have always delivered the highest quality to our customers,
but it often took significant time to get the final product exactly right during the
production process. Now with EFI Colorproof XF, we produce accurate color
100% of the time, without fail. No more hit and miss!”

In fact, EFI Colorproof XF performed so well in Mumbai that the company added
a second installation in Gurgaon in December of 2007. “We have been very
happy with EFI for years,” adds Rane. “We use EFI Fiery® and Splash® RIPs
with much of our digital printing equipment. Adding Colorproof XF made a great
deal of sense for us. Not only was it affordable, but its integration with our Fiery
workflow has added signifi cant value as well.”

Rane comments that customers actually have little interest in what printing
equipment or RIPs Comart is using, nor do they really care what proofing
system the company uses. But they definitely insist that prints and proofs match,
regardless of where they are printed. “Not only must we exactly match the final
printed product to the proof,” he says, “but we must match production across
all three engines, across our multiple plants, and in spite of the fact that we are
using a wide range of media types within many of the campaigns we produce.