Berlin-based druckpunkt Druckerei und Repro came top in the "Best cost/benefit realization" category at the CIPPI Awards 2006 using the Prinect workflow developed by Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg). The company was able to turn around its productivity and cost-efficiency thanks to the Heidelberg Prinect Printready prepress workflow and the Prinect Prinance MIS. In prepress, for example, job throughput doubled. Moreover, production data can now be accessed on demand and provides a transparent means of accurately calculating actual costs. At approximately Euro 3.3 million between 2004 and 2008, the potential savings achievable with the integration solution put it among the top candidates at this year’s Awards. The solution took first place in the “Best cost/benefit realization” category. Harry Haker, CEO of druckpunkt, accepted the award from Jim Harvey, Executive Director of the CIP 4 organization. It was presented at the Heidelberg booth at Graph Expo in Chicago in the presence of Dr. Jürgen Rautert, Board Member responsible for Engineering and Manufacturing at Heidelberg. "Using Prinect put us in a position to substantially optimize our workflows and, at the same time, introduce greater transparency into all our jobs. We were also able to use the savings and productivity benefits delivered by Prinect for new investments such as creating our very own postpress section," stated Haker when receiving the award. “There is still frequent debate in the industry over the scale of the yields produced by integrated workflow solutions, but the success of our customers at the CIPPI Awards 2006 speaks for itself. Heidelberg integrated workflow solutions have been shown to give users considerable economic advantages in several areas of real practical relevance,” commented Dr. Rautert, referring to how Heidelberg customers performed at this year’s CIPPI Awards. Overall, the CIPPI Awards 2006 proved that software workflow solutions from Heidelberg offer users exceptional potential for maximizing savings and productivity. The open and modular Prinect workflow system from Heidelberg has enabled Heidelberg customers to achieve outstanding economic benefits – both in combination with third-party workflows and as a complete system from a single source. Four of the six top-placed participants use Heidelberg solutions, three of them employing complete systems. The highest net present value (NPV) of all candidates was achieved by Mediahaus Biering from Munich, which operates a complete solution from Heidelberg. The customer’s investment calculations – based on a period of five years leading up to 2007 – estimated that implementing an end-to-end Prinect Color Solutions concept from Heidelberg would result in savings of some Euro 8.3 million. In contrast, the total investment required to achieve these savings is approximately Euro 250,000. Two further Heidelberg customers come top in other CIPPI Award categories Mediahaus Biering, Munich: The bulk of this company’s business involves extremely high-quality commercial work. It first began using Prinect Color Solutions in 2003. The benefits of standardizing the production process included a significant reduction in makeready times and paper waste. This illustrates how Prinect Color Solutions brings quality benefits in a cost-effective manner. By 2007, savings achieved thanks to the Heidelberg color workflow will amount to around Euro 8.3 million. The company came second in the “Most innovative use of process automation technology in an implementation” category at this year’s CIPPI Awards. Das Druckhaus Beineke Dickmanns, Kaarst-Büttgen: By using a Heidelberg Prinect prepress workflow and Prinect Prinance, this company was able to integrate previously isolated processes and procedures into a single end-to-end concept. This increased prepress data security and enabled the company to double productivity in terms of job throughput while maintaining the same number of employees. Savings from the Heidelberg workflow are expected to run to a total of approximately Euro 1.4 million between 2005 and 2009. In contrast, the total investment required was approximately Euro 210,000. The workflow concept took second place in the “Biggest improvement in efficiency and customer responsiveness as a result of process automation” category at the CIPPI Awards.