Business Printing Technologies Report
May 2003
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A Successful Solutions 2003
Feature Story:
It All Began With Forms!
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Dennis McGarry, CDC
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Noel Ward
Contributing Editor
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It All Began With Forms!
By Noel Ward
"As system provider, we offer our customers management of information, documents and printed matter." This is how Richard Peters, technical manager at Georg Kohl GmbH of Brankenheim, Germany, sums up the range of services of his company. "Our spectrum of services covers offset and digital printing, personalization and processing. We also offer programming and project management, label and card solutions as well as logistics and fulfillment—basically all services concerning communication and information."
Considering its range of services, Georg Kohl GmbH does not regard itself as only a printer, but rather as a provider of printing and information services. Utilizing technology from the graphics industry is in fact a means to an end for comprehensive communication services. The "intelligent" tools are a perfectly designed preliminary stage for prepress and data management as well as 18 digital printing presses, including the VersaMark Business Color Press (BCP), in operation at Georg Kohl’s since the beginning of 2002.
Service Provider and Back-up For Customers
The focus at Georg Kohl is professional data processing. "A lot of clients commission us to produce specific print jobs for business use. Many of the confidential documents we produce and distribute are invoices and account statements displaying confidential financial information. Or, sometimes we are involved quite simply with the dispatch of their daily mail," explains Richard Peters.
"If necessary, we can take over the complete range of services. To some of our customers we are also available to provide data back up. For that level of data security, professional data processing and quality management are of extreme importance to us. Our customers entrust us with extremely sensitive data and documentation. Of course, our desire to deliver superior quality each and every time applies to traditional printing jobs and documents as well as the e-mail campaigns we deliver on behalf of our customers."
Change In Customer and Order Profiles
In the last few years the client structure has significantly changed, reports Peters: "Nowadays, trade shops and small-to-medium sized businesses require less and less pre-printed forms—they print their correspondence and documents themselves on laser printers."
In response to this change in business practice, Georg Kohl has also evolved. As a result, the company’s sales share of continuous pre-printed forms has transformed from mass-production to personalized printing. In 1990, standard products such as stock tab, continuous forms, receipts and unit sets still represented 91 percent of revenue at Georg Kohl. In 2001, 86 percent of revenue was generated through new products and services like personalization, mail insertion, mailings, logistics forms, print-on-demand consulting, and project management. Traditional production of continuous forms printing constituted only 14 percent of their 2001 annual revenues of 65 million Euro.
However, this does not mean that continuous forms have been abandoned. Ten rotary offset presses, equipped to print three to ten colors, are used to print shells and all the other basic products required for mailings. Depending upon the type of processing, forms are finished in rolls, ready for processing and finishing in rolls, folded stacks, or single sheets. Peters defines the emphasis in production as the "treatment and processing of paper." Preprinted forms are personalized using digital printing or processed at various other production stages associated with the printing job.
"We offer our clients special solutions, like web portals for order processing, which helps reduce their processing costs. Jobs and products are becoming increasingly complex and complicated. Despite some very individualized assignments, we never improvise. We follow very methodical, industrial manufacturing procedures. After all, compared to the past, we only have 30 percent of the time available to finish our jobs," comments Peters.
Specialized Teams
In response to these wide-ranging demands, teams have been organized at Georg Kohl according to industry sector and product line. Each team member is a specialist in a specific industry and product, trained to define, together with the customer, the most suitable products. The client base consists of a number of industries, such as financial services, social security, communication, media, mail order, publishing and commerce, general industry, and utilities. Production areas, on the other hand, are strictly separated according to function.
Electronic Printing and Print on Demand
In electronic printing, programmers process clients’ digital data so that addresses and content can be positioned onto pre-printed forms via laser—this way, every addressee receives a personalized letter. Eliminating duplications, postage optimization, and salutation encryption are important services associated with each address. There are also specialists available to program customer-specific projects and interfaces, as well as for data processing with digital archive and workflow management systems. A strong workflow is the most responsible element in electronically produced digital printing of single-colored or multi-colored prints—each separately created and changeable at short notice.
Print-on-demand is predominantly used for very small jobs when offset printing is not economically feasible. For example, in a very short period of time it is possible to produce user manuals, one in Arabic, 500 in French and 1,500 in English. Finishing of the documents takes place either "inline" (directly at the digital printing stage) or with the bookbinder.
18 Digital Printing Machines
For Peters, digital printing is in a completely different league compared to traditional offset printing. "Digital printing is either a completely independent communication tool or part of a production process dealing with just-in-time delivery running alongside the actual product." Georg Kohl utilizes 17 Océ digital printing presses and the VersaMark Business Color Press (BCP) from Scitex Digital Printing—his latest addition. The VersaMark BCP, in use since the beginning of 2002, plays a special role strictly as a piece of production equipment, without processing or inline finishing. Roll-to-roll is the only production method used at Georg Kohl. And it has become clear at Georg Kohl that roll to roll technology fits in with their manufacturing process very well.
Mail Insertion and Continuous Processing
Using digital printing, pre-printed forms can be transformed into personalized letters. Intelligent inserting machines are capable of combining several personalized parts, preparing the mailings for dispatch. Utilizing the appropriate option, an addressee is prevented from receiving several letters from the same sender on the same day. This significantly lowers customers’ postage expense. Letters are cut, folded, stuffed in envelopes, stamped and delivered to the closest mail distribution center through the in-house mail facility. More than 100 million pieces of mail pass through Georg Kohl every year. Beyond optimizing the postage expense, security contributes to personalization effectiveness, because each mailer must contain information that is precisely relevant to the target individual. In addition, Georg Kohl produces receipts imprinted with bar codes using identification systems, preventing mismatches that could have disastrous results.
At Georg Kohl this is called "intelligent labeling." Along with direct shipment, many of the printed and partly personalized paper webs are collated to mailings and receive additional finishing in web-finishing machines. Depending on the requirements, the webs are doubled, folded, glued, perforated, cut, stamped, and outfitted with self-adhesive labels.
The Difference Between a Printer and a Service Provider
"We organize the entire process, from product development through logistics of finished printed products," says Peters. This is the very difference between a printer and a service provider.
DMIA would like to thank Scitex Digital Printing and Noel Ward for this contribution. You can reach Noel Ward at noel@ondemandpublishing.com
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