What makes a printing company successful? manroland experts together with guest speaker Professor Jürgen Matt provided the answers at the Druckforum 2010 held in Stuttgart on 6 February. They lectured on the strategy "T-O-P Performance – the success formula for increasing print efficiency".

Printing companies are faced with a multitude of challenges: price competition, stagnating order volumes, environment consciousness, enhancement demands, and the need to achieve full utilization. The manroland Value Added Printing (VAP) strategy aims at supporting a printing company in all these aspects, selectively and sustainably. An essential factor for achieving the best printing performance is an optimal interplay of Technology (T), Organization (O) and Personnel (P). Here the performance of the production process is determined by around one-third of each of the three factors. The formula is P = T x O x P.

Organization with pressroom workflows and AUPASYS materials logistics is one of manroland's core areas of expertise and aroused great interest at the Druckforum. With the printnet Workflow Manager, production over all value-adding stages can be optimally planned, controlled and monitored. The system is based on open standards like XML and JDF. Especially in packaging printing, materials logistics is very significant. The high speeds of sheetfed presses can only be fully utilized with an optimal materials flow.

printnet creates capacity for new jobs
The printnet networking and integration products accelerate the workflow performance in printing companies. From data acceptance through graphics, prepress and printing right up to finishing, printnet offers a unique end-to-end-solution. A central factor here is ideal job management with printnet PressManager perfect. Together with an MIS (Management Information System), printnet PressManager perfect collects and analyzes the job data, calculates the job and defines interfaces. manroland plays a leading role in implementation of the Job Definition Format from the CIP4 organization: customers work with JDF links to a variety of MIS providers. Within a JDF workflow, printnet PressManager perfect automatically creates jobs, assigns the PPF data, and carries out all technical presettings. This leads to significant time savings, better print results and fewer waste sheets. In addition, IntegrationPilot provides the highest level of operating comfort. Worthy of special mention are the CIP3 and JDF workflows as well as detailed planning of print job sequence.

Thanks to the data collected in the workflow, the printer always has a clear overview of the job status and the calculation. Job progress with exact time and quantity information can be tracked and controlled from the production control console. Everyone involved along the production chain benefits from the process control and transparency that saves an enormous amount of time, costs and materials. Even more savings are possible with a coordinated paper logistics system.

AUPASYS, a logistical masterpiece
An important factor for a seamless workflow is the AUPASYS materials logistics system that can be configured to provide the level of automation desired through different expansion modules. In-depth consulting that includes the materials flow in the production areas plus the building structure and future investment planning leads to complete concepts. This results in higher net production output with fewer waste sheets.

AUPASYS is very convincing in practice, especially in XXL format packaging printing: when printing 400 gsm carton, with a pile height of 1.60 meters and at a maximum press speed of 12,000 sheets per hour, the printer has around four pallet changes per hour to attend to. A pallet change can be estimated to take four minutes; with four pallets this adds up to 16 minutes from an hour. In other words the press is not printing for more than a quarter of the hour. With a fully-automated logistics system the production hour has 60 printing minutes once again. Printing capacity is expanded and overall performance increased.