Printshop Bauer GmbH from Pfedelbach in the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg has succeeded in unlocking significant potential for improved quality and productivity thanks to the Prinect printshop workflow from Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg). The company, which produces more than 220 million folding cartons a year, integrated all management, pressroom, and postpress processes in a standardized workflow within two years - and halved delivery delays in the process. In the pressroom, throughput rose by 20 percent - within the same time and with the same number of staff. By integrating the folding carton gluer in the postpress process, the time required to enter jobs was cut from six minutes to just one - equivalent to a time saving of around 80 percent. Automatic data evaluation also enabled the time required for actual costing to be cut by approximately 50 percent.

These achievements have now won the company first prize at the CIPPI Awards 2009 in the "Best cost/benefit realization and improvement in efficiency as a result of process automation implementation" category. "Investing in workflow management has more than paid off for us. Our predicted return on investment over a period of four years is in the four-figure range," stresses Eberhard Bauer, Managing Director of Bauer GmbH.

Step by step to success
As the Bauer printshop continued to grow and face increasingly demanding customer requirements, the need for an integration solution also grew. In 2007, following a lengthy period analyzing the market, the company opted for the Prinect printshop workflow from Heidelberg. Bauer has been using the Prinance management information system (MIS) from alphagraph since 1996. The first step was therefore to connect this MIS to the pressroom. The primary objective was to automatically combine color and job data and route it directly to the press. The next stage was to use Prinect to link postpress to the MIS. The entire project took around two years. "The gradual workflow integration process was the key to success," states Bauer. "It gave our staff time to learn how to use the new workflow. We were able to keep track of the project at all times, which enabled us to immediately address and solve any problems that occurred," he adds.

In addition to the described improvements in quality and productivity, the integration solution also resulted in an overall increase in process transparency. Job tracking now takes place in real time and the process for repeat jobs is largely automated.