Seattle - Metrix Software, developer of Metrix, the intelligent, automated job planning and imposition system, announced today that Classic Graphic's reported planning and imposition labor savings resulting from the integration of Metrix into their workflow, ranged from 50% for simple jobs on up to 80% for complex jobs.

When Classic merged with Belk Printing in January of 2011, a unified planning and imposition system had to be decided on. Belk had been using Metrix since 2006 with tremendous success - the labor savings dividend alone was an estimated 700-800 hours per year. Classic put Metrix through its paces and decided it was the best solution. Warren Gibson, Digital Services Manager at Classic, explained that their decision was made on the basis of several key Metrix capabilities: elimination of the planning bottleneck, combining planning and imposition into one step, reducing spoilage due to incorrect imposition, streamlining and standardization of planning, discovering problems earlier in the production cycle, and enabling automation.

Classic's decision to go with Metrix has paid off. "Metrix has added so much productivity that we've been able to handle thirty percent more work without adding any planning staff," said Warren Gibson, explaining that Classic absorbed all of the work Belk was doing prior to the merger plus that of another acquired company. 

Gibson characterized the most important Metrix dividend as "reducing operator time in prepress now that useable production layouts are done in planning." He estimated that prior to Metrix, every job had a 10-minute penalty of transposing the paper layout into imposition software. Since Classic does roughly 700 jobs per month, they now have 7000 extra minutes of prepress capacity that can be used for prepress tasks like fixing problem files. That works out to about 5.5 hours per day!

Classic prides itself on assembling one of the best teams in the business - people who are highly skilled but who also share a common vision and goal, and who love what they do. That energy, combined with a savvy business strategy and investments in leading technology - like Metrix - have made Classic a shining success story.