In restructuring its digital printing process, the global insurance group Axa has selected Axode's cutting-edge, camera-controlled supervision solution to monitor the printing of its colour documents, which has allowed the international group to attain an unrivalled productivity.

A necessary step

The fusions and buyouts achieved in recent years by the Axa group (67 million clients, with a turnover of 91 billion euros in 2008) led to the necessity of restructuring their digital printing systems to optimise and rationalise production. Axa's review of its printing process has resulted in the replacement of its printing equipment with Kodak VX5000 printers, which now allows the group to print all its documents on the same stock of white paper, whereas previously it was required to use a large number of different pre-printed formats.

An innovative solution for optimal productivity – conceived and designed by Axode

In response to Axa's specific needs, Axode designed a camera-controlled print inspection solution that checks the printing quality of set and variable data on documents printed in colour on continuous paper, as well as the concordance of printed data on both sides of the page (2up duplex).

In addition, to allow printed documents to be visually quality-controlled, Axode has included a graphic interface with full-page display, permitting operators to pass from one control camera to another, as well as to zoom into strategic areas of documents without slowing down the printing.

Thanks to the solution developed by Axode, Axa has reached an unrivalled productivity, operating at full speed while benefiting from rationalised error management: indeed, depending on the type of detected errors, the Axode solution can either stop the machine to avoid paper wastage (in case of a duplex mismatch), or track and reject the faulty document at the inserter in case of a minor or isolated error, avoiding unnecessary production stops.

All of the information collected by Axode cameras operating on Kodak printers and Tecnau micro-perforation machines is compiled and sent to the Pitney DFWorks system so that any defective documents are automatically archived and reprinted in the next print run.