Metrix Software, developer of Metrix, the intelligent, automated job planning and imposition system, announced today that the prepress team at Southwest Precision Printers in Houston, TX has been able to, in the words of Gene Green, Systems Manager, "forget about imposition and focus on the prepress tasks they were hired to deal with." The improved efficiency afforded by Metrix has allowed SWP to reassign 10-15% of prepress resources elsewhere in the company.

Southwest Precision Printers, now in business for 37 years, has developed into the largest independent, family-owned commercial printing company in Houston.

Prior to Metrix, job tickets were hand written, planning was all calculated with pencil and paper, imposition was input by hand in prepress, and "just about everything" was manual. Because they handle thousands of short-run jobs a year, Green knew he had to find a way eliminate the labor intensive work so they could keep up.

Green stated: "When I attended an online demonstration of Metrix, I was really impressed. I realized that we could resolve the planning bottleneck and the prepress imposition bottleneck with one, simple-to-use application. I knew we had to have it!"

"We got up and running incredibly fast," said Green, "and the savings were immediate." The time-consuming task of entering layouts into imposition software from hand-drawn diagrams was gone. The planner's burden of manually calculating production plans and drawing imposition diagrams also disappeared. Turnaround time in planning has been reduced significantly, benefitting both the company and SWP's customers.

Gene Green explained that one of the biggest areas of improvement was the increased speed of getting jobs into production and on press. Prepress is no longer required to recreate layouts - a huge benefit.

Green reports the support provided by the Metrix team has been "tremendous." Green added, "I couldn't ask for better support than I get from Metrix Software. When you call, you actually get a real person on the other end, who is eager to help! We see Metrix as a key part of our strategy moving forward, and Metrix Software as a key technology partner."

Green foresees huge dividends arising from Metrix as SWP moves into web-to-print. "We've recently launched our redesigned website, and the ease with which customers can order print has already created a bump in orders. Thank goodness we have Metrix!"