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PowerSWITCH success story:
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You might call it a case of beach-ball burn-out: Thomas Hackett got tired of
watching the Macintosh icon spin while files spooled and printed from the desktop
to the RIP. As Application Workflow Manager at C2 Media, Inc., one of North America’s
leading large-format printers, that time is too precious to waste. "It used to take
25 minutes," he confides. "That’s 25 minutes of an operator being idle,
watching the progress bar, and not going on to the next task or job."
C2 Media specializes in high-impact graphics for point-of-purchase and retail customers.
It has a plethora of inkjet, ultra-violet and other large-format printing systems,
the latest of which is the first Inca Digital Onset printer in the United States,
installed in nine production shops located in major North American cities.
Given the frenetic pace of retail business, lead times are extremely short,
and C2 has to turn around most jobs in a day or so. As a result, it has also
built a strong business in the digital print-on-demand market segment.
The key to staying on top of deadlines and optimizing equipment utilization is
planning, careful workflow analysis/task deployment, and an architecture that
automates as many repetitive tasks as possible.
Spooling and final output were bottlenecks
Spooling and final output are two operations that used to drag down productivity.
Having confronted and addressed the same bottlenecks at a previous job,
Hackett implemented a solution based on PowerSWITH that moves processing off
the desktop and onto a server. The result: processing times decreased from 25 minutes
to 3 minutes.
Multi-threaded, server-based
PowerSWITCH is a multi-threaded, server-based solution that integrates with
common desktop-publishing and prepress applications to enable automated workflows.
Available for both Macintosh and Windows platforms, PowerSWTICH uses an open,
modular approach to building a workflow design.
At C2 Media, for example, Hackett configured a flow that linked desktop files
created using the Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop)
to print to one of the firm’s Onyx large-format RIPs. "You can achieve an ROI
with a single workflow," he asserts.
Key benefit: task designation
A key benefit of this approach is the ability to designate which tasks get
performed by which application to maximize throughput. For example, while the
Onyx system can perform all color separations, it is a very processor-intensive task
that slows down RIPing. By moving that task to Photoshop, Hackett can push more
files through in a given time.
While some companies are reluctant to embrace new technologies, C2’s senior management
was open to Hackett's approach to automation. "I had an easier time convincing
management here than at my last employer," he notes. Once the PowerSWITCH system was in place,
the significant time reductions made believers out of his superiors, so much so
that the company has initiated a plan to roll out PowerSWITCH across the enterprise.
Standardization
Saving time is a huge issue in the graphic-arts industry, given the competitive nature of
the business and clients’ insatiable demand for faster turnaround. However, there is
another important benefit of implementing workflows using PowerSWTICH: It enables C2 Media
to standardize its workflows across employees, shifts and sites. "An operator on one
shift is just not going to process files in the same way as an operator on another shift
or at another site," Hackett observes. "Using PowerSWITCH, we can implement
corporate-wide standards for things such as RGB-to-CMYK color conversions so that
our work is more consistent."
Standardization streamlines the workflow, minimizes problems, and facilitates troubleshooting
when things don’t go as planned. "If a flow works at one site, then it’s
going to work at all sites," Hackett points out.
XML job tickets; load balancing
Since PowerSWITCH builds its own XML job ticket for each job that enters a flow,
it also facilitates load balancing across the organization’s ten sites,
enabling C2 Media to move work from one site to another to take advantage of a
particular production system, or to leverage idle capacity at one site when another is overburdened.
The job is simply transferred via FTP, the ticket identifies the appropriate PowerSWITCH flow
and specifies the tasks to be performed, and then PowerSWITCH pushes the file(s) through.
7 out of 10 files
PowerSWITCH can’t automate every task, and not every file goes through without a hitch.
According to Hackett, C2 is able to push through about 70% of all the files successfully;
it's necessary to work on the remaining 30% of the files. "It won’t work on all files,
but if we can knock out 7 out of 10 files, that gives us time to work on the remaining
3," he says.
Next steps
Moving forward, C2 plans to automate more of the workflow by taking advantage of
PowerSWITCH’s support for scripting and metadata (XML, JDF, or XMP). PowerSWITCH
supports JavaScript, Visual Basic Script (VBScript), and AppleScript, which,
when combined with ODBC and SOAP, enables integration with Web portals and MIS systems
so customers can upload jobs and have them enter production queues with minimal
or no manual intervention. Hackett wants to leverage this capability for
order entry, job ticketing, file renaming and, where appropriate, to assign
impositions. "We want to automate as many functions as we can," he remarks.
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C2 Media, Inc., is one of North America's leading large-format printers.
The company is a major player in the large-format arena and is a
leading producer of retail POP materials, catalogs, and sales collateral.
C2 Media employs 500 people at 10 sites in North America.
C2 Media Web site:
www.c2media.com
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