Re: WorkFlow's
Hi Rusty.
I love these "My workflow can beat up your workflow!" discussions. This one is not too fierce...yet.
Actually, it's easy to understand why we all stand up and praise (and sometimes defend) our investments, we have to love them. They're not profit centers, after all, but the right workflow can improve efficiency and SAVE a good deal of money in the long run.
We have been using Heidelberg's Prinect Printready L for just over a year now, and I'm confident we made the right decision. I looked at several packages from all of the major players, including Trueflow, but Printready was the best fit for us, especially since we are an all Heidelberg shop in press and bindery. Printready is a modular system and can easily grow as you do, so adding RIPs, Proofers or licenses for front-end workstations is painless (except that they're not free). The automated options are convenient and powerful, but they are not the best feature of this system...the imposition software is. Signastation is integrated nicely into the package and is the best I've seen for ease of use and power. A packaging option is available (I have not tried it) if you require the ability to nest envelopes or boxes. Also, a ganging feature called Sheet Optimizer is available that provides quick, +relatively+ painless layouts for sheets with mismatched size items. We do have this feature and it saves us at least 1.5 hours a day because we gang a number of postcards of different sizes.
On the hardware front, we upgraded to a fully automated Heidelberg Suprasetter at the same time we bought Printready. The two systems marry together well. We have saved countless labor hours with the new system, and our plates (Thermal NA) are solid performers.
Having lived with our system for over a year now, my overall impression is excellent. There have been minor hiccups along the way, most of which are attributable to operator error and were easily solved. The bottom line is this, we produce more work in less time with the same number of operators, so we have become more efficient. And that goes straight to our bottom line.
Edited by: Helmet_of_Poe on Mar 3, 2008 11:54 PM