January 19, 2004 -- In any given year, the Repro Graphics Department at the University of California, Davis, outputs millions of pages — from student transcripts and department invoices to employee salary statements and university mailers. In fact, with 50 employees, the university’s printing operation is larger than many commercial print shops, serving a small city of 5,000 faculty members and 29,000 students. While the printing operation at UC Davis is huge, it was an operation that production manager Dan Washabaugh recognized — in the late 1990s — was rapidly becoming obsolete. The department’s printers were aging and unable to meet the growing need to transfer proprietary jobs from one printer to another. UC Davis Shops For New Equipment As a result, Washabaugh began shopping around for new equipment and output management software that would accommodate the wide range of university printing needs. Most importantly, he wanted to make sure that he could continue to use the existing document formats — for example, those used for student transcripts — while changing the entire printing equipment and software operation. “We were looking for replacement equipment that would not require a multitude of programmers to reprogram their data,” Washabaugh said. “And, we wanted to be able to continue printing data without the various departments having to incur the cost of creating new forms and formats.” After some thorough research, the Repro Graphics Department installed a Heidelberg Digimaster® 9110 print system employing DataXceed? software, which recognizes and processes virtually all the popular file formats used in data centers in industry, administration, banks and insurance companies. “I’ve come to quickly realize that DataXceed has a wide range of capabilities,” Washabaugh added. “Despite the size of our operation, DataXceed provided an open software solution that we used to integrate our workflow, so it was seamless to the different departments in the university. By enabling us to print jobs more flexibly over the Digimaster print system, DataXceed software exceeded our expectations.” The need for open software also led Washabaugh to purchase PlanetPress from Objectif Lune, a program he used in conjunction with the aging printers. The program enables UC Davis’s printing equipment to be used in variable data printing applications with data from virtually any host. “The PlanetPress software was a definite improvement, but I still needed to speed things up,” Washabaugh said. “Our existing machines were becoming obsolete and our conversion to PlanetPress software was going to be a protracted effort.” The combined Digimaster system/DataXceed software solution made the changeover very easy, Washabaugh recalled. In fact, the transition was so seamless that the Repro Graphics Department replaced the rest of its aging presses with three more Digimaster print systems. In recent years, the entire UC Davis printing operation has become a showcase for Heidelberg technology, including the Digimaster systems and two QuickMaster presses. The devices are vital to supporting UC Davis’ full-service operation, which provides everything from design, imaging, offset printing, finishing, variable data and quick-copy services — including large format color printing and high speed black-and-white printing. “The Digimaster system, combined with the bundled DataXceed software, did everything our Heidelberg sales representative, Michael White, promised it would do and more,” Washabaugh said. “The combined solution helped us create a smooth transition with our clients so they didn’t have to make any changes to the forms that we print for them, which is exactly what we wanted. We’ve been extremely satisfied.”