Washington, DC - Fulfillment Corporation of America (FCA), with operations in Oregon, California and Hawaii, is in the business of supplying print collateral, promotional and other items to Fortune 500 companies throughout the region. Rapid response and lean, efficient inventories are key to the company's success, as is the quality of deliverables. To insure high quality for the print component of its operation, FCA turned to CGS Publishing Technologies International.

"FCA not a printer, but about 80% of our business is document fulfillment," said COO Len Lardieri. "We manage large quantities of printed materials from conventional printers - often offshore - but a lot is digitally printed by us, including variable data printing, on our Xerox iGen presses. Many times, we have to match color produced conventionally."

Lardieri went on to describe FCA print operations, where press runs are short - to keep inventories low - but the total volume is high, because of continuous demand by customers. "Our iGen presses produce more 'clicks' per machine than any other in the region," he said. In addition to marketing and promotional collateral, jobs also include digitally printed runs of catalogs and other material originally produced on offset presses.

More Consistent High-Volume Color

Early on, Lardieri sought a means of maintaining consistent color output from all of FCA's iGen presses, without costly manual "tweaking." Beginning last year, he began working with Allison Leach at CGS, exploring the possibilities of ORIS Press Matcher // Web. After initial testing, the company has implemented Press Manager at all four locations, with outstanding results. "I'm looking at output from four different iGens, and I can't tell them apart," Lardieri said. "Now I can use the full capacity of every machine, without worrying about different results."

ORIS Press Matcher uses a patented iterative process to match digital press output to industry-standard specifications, such as GRACoL. Day-to-day results are measured and validated using ORIS Certified // Web, which is also in use at FCA.

In the near future Lardieri plans to use ORIS Color Tuner // Web to control remote proofing devices at client locations. Because the proof output will match iGen re-sults, entire days of production cycle time - normally spent delivering proofs overnight - can be eliminated.