Central Florida Press (CFP) in Orlando is one of the largest printers in Florida’s middle region.  One of the many reasons why it has made its mark on the area is the decision by management to be one of the preferred printers in the state.  That requires outstanding leadership and strong decision-making and supported by the best personnel and equipment.  One of the best decisions in recent times was investing in manroland’s ROLAND 700 DirectDrive press, which has surpassed early expectations and contributed to CFP’s success in the first half of 2009.

CFP is a division of The MATLET Group, the largest minority owned commercial printing company in the U.S. and a leader in new and innovative approaches.  Since installing the ROLAND 700 DirectDrive deep in the fourth quarter of 2008, the press already has accumulated over 30 million impressions.

“It outperforms everything we have in our pressroom,” said CFP President Greg Orlando, a 22-year industry veteran who has been with the company five years.  “We are further along doing perfecting work with the DirectDrive than I thought we would be at this point.  We have not had any quality, color or customer issues, and the switch to 4-over-4 work has been seamless for us.”

The ROLAND 700 DirectDrive system is ideal for short-run, high performance printers, or those who use long perfectors with 8,10, or 12 units and do a high    volume of perfecting work.  It uses computer controlled servo-motors to power plate cylinders in the printing units.  By isolating the print cylinder, it reduces the time to perform make-ready tasks. Since plate changing and wash-up occur       simultaneously, resulting in zero plate-changing time, printers like CFP can save a substantial amount of time and money. No other 40-inch press offers these multi-tasking options.

After a group representing CFP management saw the DirectDrive prototype at drupa in 2004, they visited Germany a year later.  At that point they were convinced they had what Orlando considers “a makeready monster” on their hands, with much less paper waste compared to the technologies available at the time.  Being the first to install it in the United States not only was icing on the cake, but it separated them from the competition since they could reduce costs to their customers and get the work completed much quicker.

“With the DirectDrive doing 10 plates at one time, we were achieving our makeready and run waste goals after only three months with a 50 percent reduction,” said John Glick, CFP’s Vice President of Sales. 

“We have enjoyed a big benefit on the production side of the new press with a huge difference in the quality of our work.  Customers have taken advantage of the perfecting side, running it through in one-pass and getting their jobs done quicker.  They understand it is a one-of-a-kind press.”

CFP was familiar with manroland since it owns a pair of ROLAND 706 presses that have generated over one-half billion impressions since being put into service 10 years ago.  As a 24/7 operation, the company handles a significant portion of its commercial printing for some of the largest tourist attractions in Florida.  That’s why training and service were important and another aspect where manroland has     delivered for them.

“Long or short, we are running job lengths from 150 to 1 million on the DirectDrive and it has handled everything we’ve put through it,” Orlando said.  “The on-site training manroland did with our crew was very good one-on-one.  Since it is the first of its kind, we also sent our people to Chicago for the electronics training and they got up to speed very quickly.  manroland set aside plenty of hours for training as well as service and maintenance that included working with us during actual runs.”

Looking back at the ROI analysis his team conducted, Orlando said the decision to go with the DirectDrive was based on performance metrics.

“The press is performing like it should be and we are well on the way to achieving our goals with it,” Orlando said.  “Knowing what we know after experiencing the process of a unique press such as this, I know we would make the same decision.”