Co-developed by Oce and Duplo: the Oce Booklet System 4000   Birmingham, April 9, 2002 - Oce, a provider of digital printing solutions to the graphic arts industry, and Duplo, a leading developer of solutions for print finishing, are collaborating on a solution for short-run booklet printing. The joint product is called Oce Booklet System 4000 and consists of the sheet-fed digital press Oce Demandstream 4000, the Oce PRISMA+PoD print server and the Duplo Bookletmaker DBMO-4000. Oce is to take on worldwide sales and service for the solution, assisted by Duplo regional headquarters in Los Angeles, London and Tokyo. In addition, Oce is offering extensive customising services for the system. The agreement is initially for three years and will be extended indefinitely following this period. Its objective is to channel the expertise of the two partners into a solution that delivers first-class performance, reliability and economy to commercial printers specialised in short runs and finished print products. High quality press runs Players in the print industry make some challenging demands of equipment manufacturers, and integrated solutions are the manufacturers’ response. Printers want solutions that can produce short runs of finished print products at an affordable price. They want to produce bound documentation such as operating manuals or conference reports on demand, with varying numbers of pages and on various types of paper. Ideally, any packing slips should be produced with the sets and the quality has to be up to the mark. With reducing life cycles of the products and services in todays business world, demand for the short run production of documentation is strongly on the rise. The fully integrated Oce Booklet System 4000 by Oce and Duplo is targeted at precisely this market segment. The innovative buffer technology of the DBMO-4000 and the steady stream of sheets through the Demandstream 4000 make the new solution considerably faster than rival systems. The system prints and binds up to 2,370 8-page A5 booklets per hour. The Oce PRISMA+PoD software either composes the individual pages for printing or retrieves print-ready data from a database. The data is then output as a series of 4-page signatures on the Oce Demandstream 4000. The system passes the signatures one-by-one to the Bookletmaker, which collects, stitches and folds the sets and trims their front edges. Visual checks can easily be made of the booklet quality and adjustments are simple to perform without interrupting production. Hohner stitching heads deliver maximum reliability – for truly failsafe operation. The customer’s verdict: fast and trouble-free The Oce Booklet System 4000 is already in use at the Meta Systems company in Berlin. With a turnaround time of just 24 hours, Meta Systems produces operating manuals and delivers them right to the assembly line of a household appliance manufacturer. Michael Wendorff, CEO of Meta Systems, gives a positive verdict on the Oce solution: “The Oce and Duplo system does exactly what we need – it can produce the ready-sorted sets including packing slips in a one-step operation, which reduces manual effort to a minimum. The very high speed and failsafe operation of the Oce Booklet System 4000 make it a convincing performer. And this secures our success.” A proven team for innovation Duplo and Oce also collaborate on the development of the UP3I technology (Universal Printer, Pre- and Post-processing Interface). Together with other core partners such as Hunkeler, IBM, Xerox and Stralfors the companies have developed a standard for end-to-end workflow control on print production lines and are implementing Computer Controlled Manufacturing (CCM) in digital printing (www.up3i.org). About Duplo Duplo is a top-ranking provider of solutions to the printing industry. With headquarters in Japan, and regional headquarters in USA and Great Britain, the company develops and sells products for print finishing such as cutting machines and booklet saddle-stitching equipment. For further information, visit the company’s web site at www.duplointernational.com.