Kennesaw, GA - Brilliant Graphics, a commercial printer in Exton, Pa., installed Heidelberg Prinect about three years ago as part of the suite of Heidelberg technology with which the company was launched. The $6.5 million greenfield startup included a new building as well as production assets, all of which were sourced from Heidelberg. The fact that Brilliant Graphics can do $7 million worth of work annually with just two-and-a-half people detailed to prepress is an ROI the company attributes to the heightened productivity Prinect has brought to its prep department.

Lean Makes Green
According to its president, Bob Tursack, Brilliant's improved profitability is a natural by-product of being able to do everything in prepress, including all proofing and platemaking, with such a lean staff. He credits Prinect with helping the company achieve sales of $211,000 per employee-more than 50 percent higher than the industrywide average reported by Printing Industries of America last year.

"Everything we have is Heidelberg," said Tursack, whose pressroom boasts a six-color Speedmaster XL 105 with Prinect Image Control spectrophotometric color control system. Saphira Thermoplate PN plates-exposed at up to 400 lpi with Heidelberg Hybrid Screening technology-are supplied by a Suprasetter S105 CtP unit. Postpress capability, likewise, is courtesy of Heidelberg and POLAR.

As for digital workflow, said Tursack, "Our Prinect capability extends from estimating to bindery." Various Prinect production components including Signa Station and MetaDimension handle imposition, RIPping, prepress data exchange, and other critical functions. Tursack also selected Prinect Prinance as his MIS solution.

No Compromises When It Comes To Quality
Besides being able to produce more with less in an automated production workflow, "that 'more' denotes very high quality standards," Tursack said. This is because Brilliant Graphics has taken advantage of Print Color Management (PCM), a color consultation program that shows Heidelberg customers how to optimize the performance of all their Heidelberg devices and software. With the help of PCM, said Tursack, the company has turned the "potential angst" of color approval into a "fait accompli" of customer satisfaction.

Brilliant Graphics is an outgrowth of a fine art print business specializing in exhibition prints and other fine art services. Tursack had been outsourcing this work until he decided to cease brokering and start printing for himself.

"Given the exacting, high-quality work we do for museums, galleries, publishers, private artists and photographers, the risk involved in working with third parties proved unacceptable," Tursack said. "The level of personal dedication we bring to each project was impossible to achieve except by shifting all of the responsibility for results onto our own shoulders."

One Call Trumps Reliance on Multiple Vendors
Tursack said that at the printing company he owned before he started Brilliant Graphics, the effort of harmonizing production systems from multiple vendors "was half of my job." But with Heidelberg as his end-to-end supplier, he said, "I make one phone call" to resolve workflow- and equipment-related problems whenever they occur. In fact, he said, Heidelberg's support technicians sometimes "beat me to the punch" by monitoring and correcting problems remotely. Tursack acknowledges that making a 100 percent commitment to just one vendor's technology potentially was a "tremendous risk" for a start-up to assume. But, the moral and technical support he receives from his Heidelberg representatives every step of the way has proven to be the catalyst for Brilliant Graphics' success. "Without their help, we never would have been able to launch this company," Tursack said.