Montreal, Canada - Ultimate TechnoGraphics’ customer Markono Print Media Pte Ltd, a forward thinking print service provider in Singapore, reengineered its workflow using Impostrip®, making it fully hybrid in order to achieve new business growth.  

In today’s print industry, offset printers are reengineering their workflow systems to plan and produce from the moment they capture business. The final objective is to streamline and optimize orders for the most effective production scenario, whether it is on offset or digital presses. It is in this hybrid environment where centralizing production in order to eliminate redundancy, waste and unjustified costs is key yet, those who are investigating this kind of change may shy away thinking: “there are so many aspects to consider to get there”. This project is a testimonial to successful change and profitable outcome.

It was a couple years ago, Markono Print Media Pte Ltd took up the challenge of transforming their workflow and shifted to a proactive strategy by addressing the key questions like: how to centralize imposition and how to connect imposition to the MIS ticketing system to drive offset as well high speed digital presses.  The solution: one system, one team, multiple benefits. Laurence Limsico, Manager of the Pre-press department at Markono shares their experience and success. 

Founded in 1967, Markono Print Media Pte Ltd has grown from a small general printer to become one of the leading innovator of offset and digital printing services, and supply chain solutions to many of the world's leading publishers and Fortune 500 corporations.

Like many companies, Markono is already well into its transition from Offset to Digital print production technology, to prepare it to support the changing requirements of the market.

One of the more common misconceptions in this type of transition is that purchasing a digital press is all that is required to make the transition.  In reality, building the appropriate process support infrastructure first is most important.

Using the MIS/ERP planning module with an imposition application added a level of complexity, since we need to ensure that the ERP system sends instructions that the imposition system understands.

Automating the imposition process was an important part of streamlining the Prepress process.  First we looked at different approaches for automating the imposition, and it really came down to two choices. Do we use the ERP planning module in conjunction with a separate imposition application, or run imposition as a standalone process?

Since our ERP included the planning function, and it was ultimately better to centralize the coordination of all production, we elected to use the ERP planning module to help drive the imposition.    

We finally selected the Ultimate's Impostrip® Scalable imposition application, and it turned out to be a very good choice. Ultimate worked with the   developers of the ERP system to ensure that the XML instructions coming out of the ERP met the requirements of its application, as well as Customer’s needs. The automation features of Ultimate Impostrip® Scalable actually made that task a lot easier, since it is designed to be very flexible with page sizes, as well as support for all of the various imposition requirements of a mixed digital and offset production facility.  

Main benefit from Impostrip® Centralization is being less human dependent, this allowed us to redeploy the staff where needed.  In addition, we’re able to redirect the Job to whichever machine we choose.  The barcode module allowed us to further enhance our “Error Free Program”, to ensure that the job is done right the first time.

Ultimate’s support is second to none.  With us, being halfway across the globe, their technical team would remote in during our normal business hours.  This saved us time, as we did not have to communicating back and forth through emails, as the time zone difference would have cause a communication delay of one business day.

They did customization based on our requirements, and released updates & fixes after having done extensive QA testing to ensure all bugs are fixed.  When needed, we had on-line training sessions with their Trainer.

After completion of this highly successful implementation, the company is now in a perfect position to maximize its profits and increase its growth by addressing the issues we identified, as well as by reengineering its production infrastructure and   broadening its service offerings. Markono will be able to support both current market demands as well as be prepared for future changes.