The Magic Of Print-on-demand

When the Texas Agricultural Extension Service cleaned out its warehouse several years ago, it recycled 36 tons of paper. Thanks to on-demand printing, those days are gone for good.

Ralph Piper's print shop is famous within the Texas Agricultural Extension Service for performing magic.

In one case, the communications unit, which supports the Extension Service, was responsible for creating a manual on drought response in 36 hours for a federal government conference. Input was accepted and compiled electronically from extension services and experts all over the country. The 300-page file was transmitted to the print shop Thursday night. The shop created 500 complete sets in 24 hours and shipped them out Saturday for delivery Monday morning.

For another prominent project, the shop produced a 200-page Farm Bill analysis that was distributed to agricultural economists before they testified at congressional hearings. Eighteen authors each submitted a chapter. After the submissions were compiled and given a common look and feel by the design unit, 450 sets were printed and finished in just five days and shipped to Washington, D.C.

Print shop personnel actively campaign for users to submit electronic files instead of output from laser printers. In one case, a document creator called to find out how to courier hard copy to the shop for printing. The in-plant employee explained how to transmit the file. In just 15 minutes, the shop faxed back a proof.

"The customer asked how we did it," the employee recalled. "I said 'magic.' She loved it. People don't really care how we do it. They just care about the results."

This "magic" would not be possible without the print shop's on-demand digital printing system, which includes Kodak LionHeart print services software, a Kodak ImageSource 92p printer and a Kodak ImageSource 70cp copier-printer.

Currently most publications are compiled and designed by Agricultural Communications, the Extension Service's communications and design unit, and then transmitted over the Texas A&M University network. Jobs may be transmitted from the main campus 11 miles away or from extension offices up to 700 miles away.

A state agency, the Extension Service is a member of The Texas A&M University System, which is also owned and operated by the state. Ralph Piper, the auxiliary operations officer, is located in Bryan, Texas, near the largest A&M campus.

Faster Turnaround

Piper explains that all projects benefit from faster turnaround, not just high-profile projects.

"We produce a quarterly newsletter that's distributed to more than 1,500 subscribers," he says. "Production time has been slashed from several weeks to four days. Routine printing projects that used to take several days now take several hours."

Outside Piper's office is a cavernous two-story building almost a block long. The warehouse used to house millions of publications issued by the Texas Agricultural Extension Service—everything from how to kill fire ants to the pregnancy rates of beef cows. Piper's goal is to replace pallets of paper with print-on-demand publications.

The nationwide Cooperative Extension Service was created by the Morrill Act of 1862 to provide research and educational information for farmers. The Texas branch of the agency was established by the Smith-Lever Act of 1914.

Today the agency provides education in the agriculture and environmental sciences, family and consumer sciences, as well as 4-H, youth, and community development to urban and rural residents alike. Texas is not only one of the nation's top producers of beef, wheat, cotton and other crops, but it is also home to three of the nation's 10 largest cities: Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

The goal is still to collect and disseminate information, but now the operation can print documents as needed, instead of printing in volume and storing for later consumption.The benefits of on-demand printing were vividly demonstrated when a cleanup of outdated publications from the warehouse several years ago recycled 36 tons of paper. As part of that process, the agency's menu of 4,000 titles was reduced to 3,100. The agency continues to reduce this remaining inventory by publicizing the benefits of producing documents in smaller volumes.

Careful Evaluation

The Extension Service contracted with Danka after careful evaluation.

"We looked carefully at other equipment," Piper says. "However, we wanted an open system that did not need to convert standard formats to proprietary formats. We also needed a system that could be justified based on 500,000 to 600,000 impressions a month, but could accommodate 1 million impressions a month or more.

"According to our calculations, it would require 750,000 to 1 million impressions to justify most other network printers on the market and we would have to pay extra for features that were included as part of the LionHeart package."

Piper liked having the ability to install two printers for the price of one. He gained 40 pages a minute in speed and the redundancy offered by multiple platforms. The ImageSource 70 copier-printer also added special features like Free Form Color printing, Z-folding and automatic pagination and saddlestitching.

"It's a very flexible system, both in terms of volume and capabilities," he notes.

While the LionHeart system accepts a variety of different file formats, the Extension Service currently uses Adobe PostScript as a standard page description language.

"It provides the most uniform printing from the different computing platforms we serve," Piper explains. The print shop is gradually upgrading to Adobe Acrobat's portable document format (PDF), since it will support electronic distribution, as well as printing to paper or CD-ROM. That will come in handy as the organization expands its electronic distribution of documents, already begun through Agricultural communications and other groups.

Electronic Distribution

Piper says the organization already posts print drivers and most frequently asked questions on its Web site. It will soon offer abstracts or full text of Extension's free publications on the site and accept orders for fee-based publications through the site as well. It also is building an electronic library of documents that will hold masters and output them as needed. The conversion to digital printing has not been without a few challenges.

One file the in-plant received printed only page numbers. After consultation with Danka specialists in Rochester, it was determined that the file originated in CorelDRAW 8, which required PostScript 3. At the time, the in-plant only supported PostScript levels 1 and 2.

"The support team in Rochester sent us a tape with PostScript 3 so we could run the file. Then it worked perfectly," Piper explains.

Extension Service software designers also worked with Danka to add a custom-designed mailbox system that offers password-protected user locations on the print server.

The LionHeart software manages workflows and print queues. Letter- and legal-size documents are routed to one printer while newsletters, pamphlets, booklets and projects requiring spot color are routed to the other printer.

Gradually most spot color work will be transferred from presses to digital printers. Most process color work will be sent to outside printers, and individual departments must foot the bill.

"We are starting to publicize our on-line color capabilities so that document creators can maximize the readability and attractiveness of these publications," Piper says. "With the proper design, spot color documents can closely resemble process color documents at a fraction of the cost."

Printing costs are billed back to departments based on equipment and material expenses. A printing management system is updated with the latest costs for paper, labor and consumables to calculate current expenses. The shop's prices are routinely 20 percent to 30 percent lower than area printers and up to 40 percent less on some projects.

"Like [with] many in-plants across the country, the internal customers we serve are not required to use us," says Piper, "although there is an internal printing allocation system that gives them a financial incentive to use our shop. Our goal is to offer this institution the most cost-effective document distribution methods available, and we are proud to say that we are doing exactly that."