AICC Roundtable (CONT’D FROM PAGE 22)
digital print. It’s part of a selling proposition. This thing can turn jobs quickly. But that means the rest of the organization has to keep up with the speed of digital print. That was a learning pro- cess, making sure that the people we had were in the right roles and had the right tools and SOPs at their disposal to work at the speed of digital. Perreira: To add on to that, what we didn’t know when we first ran digital is that if we are printing 100 sheets, we need 100 sheets. If we are printing 1,000 sheets, we need 1,000. But what we didn’t consider at the time, because we were new and young, is when it gets passed through the digital printer and we have to convert it on the other side of production, it needs to keep up with what we’re doing. And when it gets to the die cutter, we didn’t account for a little bit of waste that happens when we’re die cut- ting. We didn’t account for waste that happens when we’re folding and gluing. We didn’t account for this and that, ba- sically everything that follows the digital asset. That was a bit of a learning curve, but we’re four or five years in now, so we’re not perfect, but we’ve definitely made some ad- vances there. Jones: What’s been the most positive outcome that you weren’t expecting, that was unforeseen? Perreira: When we first bought our Nozomi digital press, the first thing was we planned to go after pre-ex- isting multi-pass business. People that have multi-pass,
hot and heavy these days, I would imagine. Machines are already uber-expensive. Now we’re going to put 15, 20, 30 percent more on top of that. I’m glad we’re organized the way we are at the mo- ment. We don’t need to buy anything at the moment. We’ll see how that changes over time. It seems like all that is cyclical and will change. But, it’s got to be difficult. I haven’t talked to many of the machine suppliers here this week, but I’m sure they’re crying the blues a little bit. Jones: Jake, let's take a shift more to operations. Does digital present any operating challenges for Sutherland that you didn’t expect? Sutherland: Plenty. I think one of the biggest things with digital is the software component. Generally, this equip- ment is internet-connected. It is heavily software-based, at least for us. That presented a bit of a staffing challenge in finding employees who could troubleshoot, operate, and maintain the machines, both from the hardware and the software side. That’s involved on the pre-press side as well. The color management software works hand-in-hand with the press, so it plays into our QC processes and our validations be- fore we even go to print. I think the other challenge or opportunity for digital print is the speed at which you’re allowed to operate with digital print and that customers expect you to operate with
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