10 Ways to Maximize Your Inkjet Investment: Strategic Workflows That Drive Revenue and Efficiency

Hello! Welcome to this session that covers 10 ways you can creatively use our solutions to generate more revenue, enhance productivity, and save money related to inkjet printing environments. Inkjet printers have completely changed the landscape of digital print. They offer high productivity, high volumes, and consistent quality for both continuous feed and cut sheet environments. The lower cost per color impression allows you to replace preprinted shell workflows, along with all of the other warehouse management involved, as well as disposal of obsolete materials in a purely print on demand white paper factory workflow.

For many users, inkjet has met these objectives, but often times not without some challenges. Once those applications are up and running, there are typically additional ways to further maximize your investment and workflow. For example, with continuous feed in particular, higher volumes and massive productivity create new problems for your workflow. Prepress workflows require managing more and larger files, and automation is typically no longer a nice to have, but often now a requirement. Post-press workflow can also create new challenges relating to finishing, material management through the plant, and distribution processes that need to be scaled and automated as well.

The good news is that Solimar has a lot of functionality to help you with inkjet workflows. Whether you have an established print center or looking to implement an inkjet for the first time, this session should have something for you. The topics this session covers are related to adding value to current applications, running production most efficiently, cost saving strategies, along with revenue sources beyond printing. Some of the information is common to inkjet workflows, and we also hope to point out capabilities and opportunities that you may not have been aware of. These topics are supported by Solimar’s overall Chemistry platform, which has earned various industry awards over the years. It has provided many companies with cost savings and streamlined operations. The popularity of production inkjet printers for in-plants, direct mail, and transactional environments has grown significantly for several reasons. Inkjets not only provide high quality color output at very high speeds with lower cost inks compared to toner, but can completely overhaul several print related processes. A white paper factory means reduce preprinted shells and inventory, and most jobs can follow a single process from pre-press to distribution.

Inkjets have the flexibility to be able to print a wide variety of work, from color marketing pieces, statements, to books, all on a streamlined workflow that can dramatically increase productivity and reduce setup times between jobs. Moving on to optimizing inkjets. The concepts covered in this session are part of our suite of solutions that provide print file conversions, production job management and tracking, host to device connectivity, document re-engineering, postal savings, and online presentment and archiving, along with many ways to reduce output delivery costs and gain efficiencies in production inkjet workflows. With the GUI driven design that doesn’t require complex programing, the solutions enable you to rapidly implement inkjet workflow processes for item number one on our list.

We all have a core business, but most operations are constantly looking for new ways to extend their platform to be able to take on new application types. This is especially true with high-speed continuous feed inkjet devices that support very high volumes. Transactional printers are adding direct marketing, commercial printers are taking on digital books and other products to feed the beast.

Chemistry helps to support onboarding for just about any type of application in your workflow. This not only keeps the printers running, but allows you to go after higher margin work outside of your traditional markets, or support internal print requirements from your various departments. The typical implementation time is a matter of days, as opposed to long, drawn out, complicated solutions that require lengthy implementation times, with custom coding and the associated expense of a lot of professional services that are more difficult and costly to maintain and support.

The typical workflow we use to support inkjets is to standardize the input data to PDF files that are optimized for your workflows. Each job is indexed to identify the mail piece boundaries and obtain information about each record. Based on this information, the output can then be enhanced at a mail piece, sheet and page level based on specific content in the output. This can integrate with external systems such as postal software, reporting and archive systems, along with existing processes. The enhanced output is then organized to support printing and finishing, along with eDelivery distribution. To onboard applications to inkjet workflows, the transform of the print data is commonly required. Inkjet printers typically support either IPDS, PostScript or PDF. This leaves a gap for other print languages that could be in your production environment.

This table shows the print language that the Chemistry platform can convert into what inkjet support to enable support for application output that otherwise would not be compatible. The transforms are commonly used to enable transactional print data to run an inkjet, and enables the onboarding of applications into the Solimar Chemistry platform, which leverages PDF capabilities when enhancing existing application output. It enables you to have a common platform for managing transforms and driving the printers. The conversions also include data optimizations, which are especially useful for PDF files that may not process efficiently on the inkjet and can even detect problem files before they can have a chance to cause issues during your production. Now that you can get your output files to work on your inkjet using conversions, we’ll move on to our Rubika solution, which is the enabler for many inkjet workflow concepts, and topic number two.

Rubika supports enhancing and modifying current output so the changes don’t need to be made at the application that’s creating the output. This is especially beneficial for companies running host applications that are difficult to make changes to, or where some of the incorrect concepts will cover are not possible. With Rubika, the output enhancements are done post composition, so you can continue to compose the output as you do today, but move into the benefits of inkjet printing.

The solution provides a wide array of functionality to meet the goals of inkjet workflows, and is modular so you can start with what you need and expand as requirements grow. The first functionality many companies want to implement with their inkjet is moving to a white paper factory workflow. This typically involves eliminating preprinted stock and printing the static form information as an electronic underlay on the fly for each sheet to replicate the printed shells, which provides opportunities to reduce costs in several areas.

For example, storage space for paper rolls is reduced since you don’t have to stock rolls for all of the variations and just stock blank rolls. Underlays can be updated electronically, which eliminates outdated stock waste and shortages. Managing inventory becomes easier since there’s less stocks to manage, but can also help with supply chain purchasing issues. The reprint process is more efficient, as they can be done on plain stock, rather than having to load preprinted shells in the printer to run a few pieces of offline from production.

White paper workflow also enables conditional content to be added dynamically to each page at runtime. In addition to preprinted stock replacement, a virtually unlimited library of digital inserts can be printed inline rather than using preprinted offset inserts, so long as the media is acceptable. This overcomes limitations at the inserter for your restricted to how many bins are available.

Moving to inkjet typically introduces color capabilities to the output, which helps to improve the appearance of the application and helps to make the introduction of dynamic messaging and promotional information more impactful and relevant. An important distinction to note with Solimar’s workflow is that the data can be indexed all the way down to the page and field level. This enables the underlay, messages and inserts to be conditionally added to the output on a page-by-page basis. The underlays can be applied based on what tray selection the original stock was associated with, and it accounts for both the front side and back side forms as compared to solutions that have no conditional logic and must apply the same overlay logic to every statement. In addition, as the output is modified with the inserted pages and sorted, the relevant content, such as sequence numbers and barcodes will be updated to reflect the new values. So, the old way of storing inventory preprinted shells, inserts, or the final output such as manuals can go away with the use of a white paper inventory and printing updated materials on demand, where the overlays, variable data and digital insert are applied as jobs are printed. There are a lot of transactional documents out there that have been running for many years that look pretty plain, and may not meet customer expectations on what the correspondence should look like.

This brings us to item number three, which is that with Rubika, you can facelift these applications without the need of going upstream to the composition system, which is sometimes not even an option for legacy output.

For example, here’s a sample of a typical white paper factory application. For supporting inkjet, you add enhanced color overlays to replicate preprinted stock and can include any dynamic messaging along with coloring elements on the page. Barcodes and sequence numbers are updated, and dynamic digital inserts are added based on the conditional logic. You can merge files, add or remove pages along with updating the content. Address box can be removed to align with standardized envelopes and preparing the addresses for mailing output can be segmented based on sheet counts, so it’s presented perfectly for your post processes and much, much more. Instead of being stuck with the files you receive, you have the freedom to shape them to create workflows that work the best for you. Everyone wins here. The business gets a pretty statement without a lot of work or changes in the workflow. Your end user recipients get a better looking communication and you get to better leverage the capabilities of your platform while making it more sticky with your customers. As a tangent benefit, these capabilities enable cost savings related to production expenses, paper, envelopes and inventory. This also overlaps with supply chain issues that you may be facing for paper, envelopes, and offset inventory for using less paper. We can move simplex applications to duplex or to an N-up format. For N-up, we can shrink the original content so it can fit N-up on the output. For this, you might take 4 or 8 pages and format it for a single sheet.

Using a digital proof and approval process can avoid printing samples to review the hardcopy output. Doing reprints on non-continuous feed printers can avoid the waste that may occur when running smaller jobs on the continuous feed devices. There are also application specific ways to reduce the amount of print, such as schools and universities only printing the needed chapters or lesson plans required instead of the entire book.

For envelope reduction, we support workflows to reduce the number of custom envelopes you may be using. Standardized address cover pages can be added, or the address content can be repositioned on the page if there’s room, so it shows through the standardized bundled envelopes. Householding the output and removing undeliverable addresses not only saves postage, but reduces the number of envelopes needed for the mailings.

Householding would combine multiple documents intended for the same recipient into a single consolidated mailing for one envelope, versus multiple mailings going out. And finally, using a white paper workflow allows for dynamic digital inserts and preprinted shell replacement, versus procuring them as offset jobs, and then having to store them. Keeping inkjet printers running at rated speed is another key area that companies have a focus on, and the Chemistry platform assist with this in multiple ways. Some common requirements the solutions helps with are optimizing print streams so they process more efficiently, including supporting various vendor specific formatting needs such as resource caching, specialty font calls like MICR, color specification, flushing the inkjet heads by inserting pages with color bars, embedding fonts, and supporting direct mail, commercial, print on demand, and transactional applications within a single solution.

Keeping track of inkjet status and activity is also important for many companies with support for bi-directional information such as job status, media and ink usage reporting. Oftentimes, optimizing the output can delay the expense of having to upgrade your existing controllers to support new work, or on the flip side, enables new controllers you want to place to support your existing applications.

Output control and formatting often goes beyond just getting the printers running at rate speed, but supporting related aspects of the workflow, such as finishing requirements like tray calls using JDF from cut sheet devices with PDF files, and adding barcodes to control the post print finishing line processes. Formatting the output so it can be processed properly as the next area will explore, and is number six on our list.

Some inkjets are continuous feed devices and commonly run the output 2-up as compared to cut sheet devices. Our workflow supports taking 1-up cut sheet applications and formatting them for continuous feed in 2-up or other N-Up requirements. This process can format the layout of the output in multiple ways, such as imposition for books or book block format. As documents are moved to new layouts and run on standard stocks, barcodes, inline perforation controls, trim marks, and quality controls can also be added to the output. We can also reverse this and decompose files that are currently N-up to be 1-up or other layout for cut sheet printing or eDelivery. The page content can be shifted and scaled to make room for control marks, if the original output does not have the necessary space on the page as well.

A case study related to the benefits of modifying the page layout is with IWCO. They installed new inkjet web presses and the margins needed for barcodes and other marks for the presses were half an inch different than what the existing equipment used. The chip out area is printed but then removed with the inline cutters. To accommodate this half inch difference, they would have had to have upgraded their cutters that relied on fixed blade positions to use variable blades at a cost in the six figures. To further complicate this, they have thousands of composition templates for their client base, so modifying them at the source was not practical. Using Rubika’s post composition solution enabled them to quickly make the adjustments for the different type of areas needed for various application types with their existing output, avoiding the need to upgrade the finishing equipment or modifying the composition process. This case study along with the video is on our website. It has additional details about the workflow and solution.

Inkjet also provides several workflow efficiency possibilities to print processes. Companies can standardize on fewer envelope types by adjusting the output’s address position or adding a cover page for flats and envelopes. The output can be segmented, so jobs that use the same inserter set up or envelope type can be run together. This avoids having to adjust press and inserter configurations as much for various job setup requirements. Inserter control files can be generated to integrate with the inserter for job and item level tracking, integrity controls in both closed loop or open loop automated reprint processes, and the barcodes can be adjusted for just in time inserter control so jobs can be printed to match what equipment is available, even across multiple sites. Reprinting defective pieces can be a time consuming. high touch process for the doing manual or automated scanning. We can make this a lot easier by extracting specific pieces from a print run and creating a reprint file, and can even re-engineer reprints that they can be printed on smaller printers, which leaves for continuous feed and high volume devices available for production.

A couple of other value add features Rubika supports are to help keep the quality up by adding colored boxes to current or inserted pages to flush the inkjet heads, which prevents them from clogging when certain colors are not used during the long runs of output. The second is to introduce quality control pages to the output where Rubika duplicates records in the output and modifies the address and barcodes so they are not actually mailed, but can be kept for a proof of quality or seed the output with samples. These quality control records are useful to keep as a record of how the job was produced, to validate internally, or to show clients that there were not any quality issues with the print run. And reordering the jobs print order at the entire file level, or per record level digitally prior to the print, is typically less expensive and faster than using mechanical rewinders.

Going digital can also save you on the floor space and maintenance cost of the rewinders. Job batching workflows to create optimal print job sizes and scheduling like work into jobs, is number seven on our list and are important parts of getting the most value from your inkjets can bring. This includes various concepts for combining files such as concatenation, assembly, householding, and commingling.

The first level of batching is concatenation. The concatenation process reads files from a folder and combines them into a single optimized output file. This is commonly used for producing larger files from many small PDF files to improve printing efficiency, and collating PDF files that contain information common to a particular set of criteria. This process also optimizes files by consolidating resources to make for more efficient output files.

The next level of combining files is in the assembly process, which is similar to concatenation, but reads an input file that specifies what files to combine. An example workflow is to assemble chapters of a manual or the components of a mailing that should go into the same envelope. There’s not a limit to the library of files that can be assembled, since the process gathers the content based on what’s in the input file list. This can be used to automate manual collation tasks to reduce costs and human errors with faster turnaround times. The assembly process also applies the same optimization of the PDF resources that the concatenation process does.

The third level of combining files is job batching. This enables a processing flow that combines jobs with similar characteristics into larger batch jobs, sorts the mail pieces, and optimizes them for greater operational efficiency and cost savings. Jobs with matching attributes such as paper, stock and finishing, can be manually batched or scheduled for release automatically based on several scheduling options to help with meeting service level agreements. The batching process provides significant workflow improvement potential for anyone with a lot of small or medium jobs that could be combined for mailing or production processes. Note that you can also use Rubika to modify jobs to fit standardized job profiles, such as moving address blocks, updating barcodes, adding separator pages, and so on.

Job batching is also useful to combine small jobs into larger print runs based on their due dates, where they are held and gathered until they meet scheduling requirements before they are submitted to print. Jobs can be gathered until the find sheet count is reached, in order to fill a production roll of paper or other production purposes. And when ready, the job batches can be manually or automatically processed.

Another important part of job batching or combining files is that it enables increased postal savings for small and large jobs, with digital commingling. By combining jobs into consolidated print runs and then processing them as a single job for postal processing, you get greater zip code saturation for increased postal savings, which is often the most expensive part of mailing.

In addition to digital commingling, there’s householding, which is the concept of merging multiple records for a recipient into a single envelope from across files versus sending multiple mailings. For example, combining the checking, savings, and money market statements into one mail instead of three. Merging like information together in the processed output is a good way to reduce mailing related costs. It works by using common fields across the output file, such as an account number, to merge the records together into the final output. This means less mailings to save postage and less envelopes, with the added convenience for consumers and help support any green initiatives that your company might have. Additional green concepts include electronic delivery as an alternative to print, which also relates to reducing print related costs from consumables.

The archive system can also serve as part of a reprint solution where damaged pieces are commonly printed on cut sheet devices versus back to the inkjet. Having the electronic output available, ad hoc is a value add beyond the printing of hardcopy, and is expected by most industries. SOLsearcher is also what enables several capabilities related to production printing when combined with SOLitrack which brings us to number ten.

The final component is our SOLitrack dashboard, which is important for inkjet environments as it enables many of the inkjet related concepts such as job batching, scheduling and job tracking down to the piece level, proofs and approvals, distribution for the production process, and letting me know when things are going well or when there are issues by providing alert notifications along with reporting.

Overall, you have the print file optimization, maximizing print efficiency by creating larger print runs and batching like work together with digital commingling. With each step in the workflow being monitored down to the piece level tracking with SOLitrack to help with the automation and management of your overall inkjet environment.

Thank you for your time. We hope you found this session helpful, and feel free to reach out to us with any questions as to how we can assist you with your inkjet workflows.