Digital Destination

For short-run, on-demand work—especially work that can be enhanced with variable data—digital printing is the answer.

FOR YEARS the data center at Georgia Tech University was churning out up to 12 million impressions annually and was a separate department from the in-plant. Paul Thomas, director of printing and copying services, knew that if he could combine both departments, he would produce this work cheaper and faster.

Last year Thomas merged the in-plant with the data center. He then made another bold move by purchasing two new 110-ppm Kodak DigiSource 9110s, distributed through Danka. He hasn't looked back since.

"It enabled us to take on their [the data center's] work and install new technology—then market those capabilities to our customer base," Thomas explains. "We were not in the high-speed digital printing market before—but we are now."

Digital printing is impacting the in-plant world like never before. More than 62 percent of in-plants use digital printing equipment, according to an IPG survey, and they say an average of 24 percent of their work is printed on digital devices. Almost 52 percent of respondents use Xerox DocuTechs, and over 48 percent also have other high-speed digital printers.

Digital printing is so big that even offset giant Heidelberg has come out with a digital printer, the Heidelberg Digimaster 9110. This engine is also being used in other vendors' recent products, including the Kodak DigiSource 9110.

As DRUPA 2000 approaches, it's a virtual certainty that other manufacturers will soon be unveiling a new crop of digital printers. Xerox is set to launch some innovative color and black-and-white devices at the On Demand show in New York, and Indigo will make some announcements at an upcoming Tel Aviv press conference.

Though many in-plants still use offset duplicators for short-run jobs, those devices are showing their age. Offset may still be the best solution for long-run, high-quality, four-color jobs, but for short-run, on-demand work—especially work that can be enhanced with variable data—digital printing is the answer.

Welcome To The Digital Jungle

Since its debut a decade ago, the Xerox DocuTech had been the unchallenged king of the digital printing world. Last year, however, Heidelberg provided some competition with its 9110 engine.

"DocuTech was a product that created a market," points out Tom Wetjen, vice president and general manager of production publication solutions for Xerox. "The digital production publishing market did not exist 10 years ago."

The fact that it took so long for competitors to enter the market shows the significance of DocuTech technology, Wetjen says. And Xerox' experience in digital printing will prove to be a challenge too large for newcomers to overcome, he predicts. But digital printing is a growing field, and has recently added some unlikely players.

"It's a pretty strong statement on how important digital is for the printing industry when a company like Heidelberg finds it necessary to go acquire a digital printer," Wetjen concedes.

To enter the digital world, offset leader Heidelberg purchased Kodak's digital printer and copier/duplicator operations last year. Kodak developed the electrophotographic imaging technology used by the Heidelberg Digimaster 9110, which allows any image to be placed on any page, in any document, at any time without slowing production.

Heidelberg has sourced its engine to several companies. Products using the Heidelberg engine include:

• The imageRUNNER 110 from Canon U.S.A.

• IBM's Infoprint 2000

• The Kodak DigiSource 9110 from Danka.

"I think there is a tremendous market out there that is really looking for something different," says Vahahj Khan, product manager for digital printing at Heidelberg. Khan says the Heidelberg offering is a very modular system with an open architecture, able to accept PostScript, PDF, PCL or TIFF files. The 9110 uses Small Particle Development (SPD) technology, producing toner particles one-forth the size of those used by conventional copiers, resulting in a more precise dot, he says. It also boasts a short paper path to avoid jamming problems.

"When you see the print quality coming off a Digimaster product, it is so finely laid down on the paper that you really feel it is some kind of near-offset quality," Khan contends.

For some jobs, vendors feel that the quality of digital printing is already as good as offset.

"When it comes to quality, it depends on the type of application," says David Sigler, director of the print and publishing group for Océ Printing Systems U.S.A. "If you are printing a book, digital will match offset quality."

For this type of work, Océ offers the DemandStream 8090 DI, which produces 744 ipm. It also targets the in-plant market with a lineup of digital color products. Through a relationship with Agfa, Océ markets a number of the Chromapress products, including the Chromapress 32I, producing up to 70 four-color images per minute.

More In-plant Digital Color

With color printer speeds on the rise and the improvement of image quality, more in-plants are predicted to purchase digital color gear in the near future.

"The moment black-and-white printing technology delivered high enough quality, was low enough in cost and easy enough to use, the customers—the corporations—brought it in-house," notes Benny Landa, Indigo founder and chief executive. "The same thing is going to happen in color. The moment color printing is high enough in quality, low enough in cost and easy enough to use, much of it will be brought in-house into the corporate environment."

Indigo offers the e-Print Pro+, an entry-level, four-color digital press. Through a partnership with A.B.Dick, customers can also get this product under the A.B.Dick Colour label. Indigo plans to make a major product announcement this month, aimed in part at the in-plant market.

Cluster Up

An alternative to the DocuTechs or 9110s of the world is to link several lower-speed printers together through a computer platform. Several companies now market versions of the T/R Systems MicroPress Cluster System. Hitachi Koki Imaging Solutions, Ricoh and Minolta have all announced deals to allow the Micropress to be used with their printing devices.

The Hitachi offering is known as the DDP (Digital Document Publishing) MicroPress, and features powerful job management utilities. It outputs up to 840 ppm. It is based on the production capabilities of Hitachi's DDP 70 network printer.

Powering up to 12 engines, the front end of the MicroPress allows jobs to be dispersed throughout the print shop, the office or to printers located around the world through the Internet. It allows users to submit, print and manage jobs remotely. The MicroPress can send several jobs to several different printers on the system or one job to several printers for fast production.

"You can do a number of jobs in-house and do them much quicker," says Bill Melo, vice president of worldwide marketing for Hitachi Koki Imaging Solutions.

Jim Cavedo, marketing communications manager for T/R Systems, reports he has seen an explosion of interest in cluster systems in the in-plant market in recent months, namely in the university setting.

"The education market has just boomed for us in the last six months," says Cavedo. "It used to be in-plants in the university environment were given a budget. Now they are a business and have to make a profit to survive. They are looking for ways to meet their networking demands and meet the IT requirements—something they don't have to invest a ton of money in and that has low maintenance requirements."

One such university in-plant, Georgia Tech, put Danka to the test before giving the company its business. Thomas required the vendor to take all the old legacy Xerox proprietary applications and translate them to PostScript. It was a major undertaking, but Danka did it—and Thomas and his customers have been happy ever since.

"Now it works like clockwork," he raves. The shop receives no more hard copy, Thomas reports. All jobs are sent over the network or on disks. This has increased efficiency and reduced turnaround time. For example, Thomas says, the printing of the university employee W2 forms was traditionally handled by the data center.

"It was a process that was taking them a week to 10 days to print," recalls Thomas. But that all changed when the in-plant took over and added two Kodak DigiSource 9110s.

"We worked out receiving a Postscript file with all the data on it from them," he explains. "They were amazed that if they gave us a file one day that I could have all of the W2s back to them the next day."

This is what all shops will need to do in the future, vendors say—and those who are waiting may leave themselves in the dark.

"Those people who are remaining in the older offset world are setting themselves up to be outsourced or taken over by other departments," warns James Tramontana, digital reprographics segment manager for IBM Printing Systems. Tramontana suggests managers move to a system that can handle variable information and can integrate hard copy and digitally produced copy into the workflow. Also look for one that is easy to use, he says.

Thomas agrees that the time is now for in-plant managers to invest in digital printing technology.

"If you are still out there doing analog copying—that's the stone ages," Thomas insists. "There is nothing like this. This is the way to go."

Make Your Move

When deciding to move to digital equipment, Johan Laurent, marketing manager for Xeikon America gives some suggestions to ensure your success. He says to:

• Know your customers' needs.

• Compare prices with outside vendors.

• Look at all advantages digital can bring.

• Promote your new abilities within the organization.

• Give your customer service and sales staffs impressive sample pieces.

• Host an open house.