Clays renews its POD solution with investment in Ricoh’s Digital Book Printing
Stephen Palmer, head of production print, Ricoh UK and IrelandLeading European book printer Clays is the first major industry player in Europe to sign up for Ricoh’s latest print on demand book production solution.
This implementation of Ricoh’s new Digital Book Printing Solution, first shown at drupa 2016, combines Ricoh TotalFlow BatchBuilder with monochrome Ricoh 8120e digital production presses.
Ricoh’s Digital Book Printing Solution is a specialised book workflow package. It uses proven TotalFlow BatchBuilder technology optimised for the specific needs of highly intensive short run book environments.
The solution is vendor neutral, analysing incoming orders, from multiple channels. It also automates the production of book ‘batches’ based on customisable business rules such as run length, media type, delivery date and even third party finishing requirements.
Once the target print platform (web or cut sheet) is selected, the workflow automatically imposes the files via a close integration with Ultimate Technographics Impostrip Automation. Errors can be detected quickly and corrected with the integration of Enfocus PitStop Pro into the Ricoh workflow. Using Ricoh’s Digital Book Printing Solution to process batches of books, rather than single jobs, on both digital and offset presses, dramatically improves operational efficiencies along with reducing waste.
The ability to integrate to legacy MIS systems, using JDF and JMF, enables a real time view of production – even down to a single book.
Clays produces over 140 million books per year for publishers such as Penguin Random House, Hachette UK, HarperCollins, Pearson, Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press.
Paul Hulley, Clays Managing Director, comments, “High quality, fast turnaround, ultra-short run book production has been an important part of our offer for some time; we are pleased to be working with Ricoh to refresh and enhance our capability in this area.”
“We researched what solutions were available on the market to achieve that. Ricoh’s Digital Book Printing Solution was best suited to meet our requirements."
As for the expected business impact he states, “Return on investment will be about 18 months based on current production methods. TotalFlow BatchBuilder automates file batching and imposing 4-up on SRA3 and it integrates into the existing MIS system to report and track single book production.”
Stephen Palmer, Director Production Print Business at Ricoh UK & Ireland says,
“We’re delighted that Clays, one of the largest book manufacturers in the world has chosen Ricoh’s new Digital Book Printing Solution. A high volume of small jobs can be very challenging. TotalFlow BatchBuilder streamlines the process to save time, increase throughput, improve printer utilisation and reduce setup time for the bindery. This allows ultra-short run jobs to be completed efficiently and profitably. Clays is already seeing these benefits translate into real production enhancements.”
