Supporting Soldiers With Print

When the United States Department of Defense (US DOD) needs to get a message out to a foreign audience to support its soldiers in the field, it has to act quickly. For this reason, the US DOD maintains a fleet of Kodak NexPress digital presses, along with a contingent of bindery equipment, in several locations around the world. In addition, it is building deployable units, to be stationed where they are most needed.

"Our mission is to mass produce high-quality products with a very quick turnaround period," notes the US DOD's print program manager.

The products produced by these print operations might include leaflets, posters or books—even comic books and coloring books, whatever it takes to bring a message to a foreign audience.

"Print is an important strategic tool within DOD," says the manager. "A small mission for us would be hundreds of thousands [of pieces], and a typical mission is in the millions. When you have a surge, you could end up having 5 to 7 million products coming in on day one that have to be turned around in a 48-hour period. On the second day, you're getting another mission of similar volume. And this could be in multiple countries." Uptime is critical within this environment.

"With missions around the globe synchronized based on getting these products, there are no excuses," notes US DOD's print program manager. "With our old [offset] presses, we had 2.5 to three hours of downtime between jobs. With our NexPress systems, our downtime between jobs has been reduced to 15 minutes. We end up saving, literally, eight to nine hours within our 24-hour work day."

A dedicated support team of field engineers has been instrumental in keeping the presses operating at maximum capacity.

"We have tremendous turnover within the soldiers that operate the presses. When we're lucky, we keep them for two years, so their level of expertise is not what you see in the commercial world," says the manager. "Our lynchpin is our team of field engineers, which provides a very high level of technical expertise on system maintenance and repair. Trained by Kodak in Rochester, they come back and train soldiers to operate the machines. When we deploy a system into the field, the field engineer goes with it. Because of their dedicated support, our uptime averages 97 percent."

Environmental Advantages

Reducing the environmental impact of its print operations has been a bonus for the US DOD, particularly with deployable units that operate in foreign countries.

"You try to be a good steward when you're in someone else's country," says the print program manager. "The low environmental impact of the NexPress platform has been a tremendous advantage. Soldiers are no longer exposed to caustic cleaning solvents, and don't have to find ways to dispose of the chemistry."

NexPress presses eliminate many of the consumables and chemistries required with the US DOD's old offset presses, and use inks that contain no VOCs. Output is de-inkable and recyclable, and minimal makeready times reduce ink and substrate waste.

"Customer satisfaction has been the biggest benefit of using the NexPress presses," notes the manager. "In the past, units that are deployed around the world would contract with a local vendor, but often experienced issues with quality and turnaround. As our capabilities have grown, we're getting more requests from more units within the DOD."

The new deployable units being built will be housed in self-contained, self-sustaining expandable shelters. They will include NexPress presses, cutters, binders and generators to supply power. Soldiers will transport these mobile in-plant operations, set them up and break them down as needed. The first deployable unit will be fielded by the end of this year.

"We can print much more cheaply than outside vendors," contends the manager. "In a cost comparison with a commercial firm for a particular style of leaflet that we produce, we came in at 2 cents per leaflet vs. 19 cents for the outside vendor."

In addition to the NexPress presses, the US DOD's print operations include Kodak glossers, KIP wide-format inkjet printers, Sterling Digibinders, Polar cutters, Standard Horizon perfect binders and Watkiss booklet makers, as well as assorted shredding and strapping equipment.

"With the Kodak NexPress platform, we can now compete with any commercial vendor in the world," concludes the print program manager, "and produce as high or better quality with a guaranteed turnaround time."