ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill. — As Bill McGinley observes the pace of growth taking place in and around Chino, Calif., less than an hour east of Los Angeles, he sees a niche waiting to be filled. "There is a real market for high-end short-run and medium-run work from customers who need the products printed on short notice," said McGinley, president of Impact Printing & Graphics, Inc. "We have become a 'last-minute' printer. Our customers rely on us to turn projects around immediately." He pointed to a recent example — an order for three automotive-related sales sheets, 2,500 pieces each printed four-over-four. The customer files arrived at the 16-employee print shop at 4:00 in the afternoon. The finished project was delivered by 8:30 the next morning. "This is a typical situation for us," McGinley noted. "Before we went direct-to-plate, our employees logged lots of overtime meeting incredibly tight deadlines. With our Screen PlateRite 4100 platesetter and Trueflow workflow, however, we had plates at 5 p.m. Making plates from film would have pushed well into the second shift and carried the risk of human errors, dust specks or scratches." Founded eight years ago, Impact Printing offers a mix of commercial printing, trade printing and prepress services. Operating from a 13,000-square-foot facility, the $2.5 million firm maintains two shifts a day, five days a week. Impact Printing specializes in high-quality, four-color process work. Its bread-and-butter press — a five-color, 20 x 28-inch Komori — delivers brochures, catalogs and collateral materials for entertainment companies, beverage producers, advertising agencies and marketing firms. Since installing the Screen PlateRite thermal platesetter and Trueflow workflow management system, Impact Printing has experienced better control over production and improved image quality. Built on the latest PDF core technology from Adobe and integrating Screen's own prepress workflow technology, Trueflow provides intelligent, open and automated production. "We've cut our production time in half," McGinley said. "The PlateRite 4100 produces up to 10 plates an hour, which is just right for our business. Screen's automatic inline punching gives us perfect registration and helps us achieve faster press makeready. We've entirely done away with film production. The digital workflow eliminates all the problems and the finger pointing that inevitably comes with problems. In time savings alone, the Screen system pays for itself." Impact Printing opted for the Screen computer-to-plate workflow based on a number of factors, according to McGinley. "Screen products are like a reliable, cost-effective, excellent-running car," he remarked. "We owned a Screen DTR-3100 imagesetter and were very satisfied with the quality and service. Screen has great customer service. Screen equipment seems to be the easiest to use. We have pretty technology-savvy folks working in prepress, but our film stripper had only rudimentary knowledge of computers. With only a couple of days of training, this operator was up and running jobs on Trueflow." Use of Screen's technology has brought significant business benefits as well. "The upgrade has allowed us to attract and retain different types of printing work," McGinley said. "We've already produced several 80-plus-page catalogs for customers. Normally, we would not have been able to compete for those projects."