Ghent, Belgium - The Hague-based printer DeltaHage recently expanded its printing capacity with the installation of a new KBA eight-colour press. To optimise its prepress workflow, the company opted for Enfocus PowerSwitch.

DeltaHage is a full-service sheet-fed offset printing company with an extensive prepress division and in-house finishing facilities. Approximately 140 employees ensure round-the-clock production of top-quality printing to ISO 12647-2 standards. The company has a broad order portfolio for a wide range of customers, including governments, publishers and educational institutions.

Boosting capacity
"The new installations have consequences for the prepress, as all the machines need to continue working at a constant pace," comments Ron Ebing, Head of Prepress at DeltaHage. "A second CTP installation guarantees the plate production, but a streamlined input of the material from the prepress division is equally as important."

About three years ago, DeltaHage investigated how to automate its workflow. This would allow the company to more efficiently process its steadily growing order stream at its prepress division: "PowerSwitch has helped streamline our operation by standardising and automating the workflow at crucial points. And because Enfocus has an excellent reputation in the industry, we know we can rely on them to respond quickly to ad-hoc software developments and issue timely updates," adds Ebing.

Creative and practical applications
The application of PowerSwitch at DeltaHage has been expanded gradually. "It is crucial to keep in mind that automation is a tool and not a goal," explains Ebing. "This is why PowerSwitch is managed by two prepress people and not by programmers. On-the-job staff use PowerSwitch in a very creative and practical manner. We immediately opted for the extended range of the Switch package so that we could expand without limitations."

Dimitri van Gaever, International Sales Account Manager for Enfocus, comments: "Switch comes in three versions: LightSwitch, FullSwitch and PowerSwitch. The latter is really the workhorse of the family. By using scripts, users can create their own workflows for very specific workflow applications. However, users can also get excellent results on existing workflows, just like DeltaHage did. Switch does not compete with production workflows - like DeltaHage's Prinect - but adds a specialist depth and refinement to it."

Automation as a tool, not a goal
DeltaHage has been working with a few hotfolder-directed PowerSwitch workflows, such as the automatic creation of optimised PDF files for the FTP controller, and the creation of samples. Ebing elaborates: "These are relatively simple workflows that are delivered by Enfocus or can be found on the web, which means we don't have to create our own scripts. We analysed the most common actions that would be easy to automate. These are the areas where you notice significant results instantly."

The results of such automation translate into more than increased efficiency and time savings. Specialists can now focus fully on the colour management of demanding imagery, while DTP staff can spend more time on layouts. Ultimately, DeltaHage can now process more orders in the same timeframe, with the same number of staff: "By working in a standardised and automated way, mistakes can be rectified at an early stage, which saves time and reduces costs in the long run," says Ebing. Customers are also benefitting directly from DeltaHage's implementation of PowerSwitch: "If something is wrong with the files when they're delivered, the sender receives an automated message, even when we we're able to fix the problem. This reassures the customer that we're in control of everything, and helps guarantee the excellent quality our customers expect," Ebing concludes.

Ebing asked Publiqare, one of Enfocus' Dutch resellers that has been involved in other software implementations at DeltaHage, to introduce PowerSwitch gradually: "We've been disappointed in the past with other automation solutions, so it was imperative to make sure employees were not too skeptical about the implementation. However, it quickly became clear that PowerSwitch is very user-friendly and really works," concludes Ebing.