Digital Workflows

Starting in early 1995, Inland Graphics Resource Center began a trailblazing journey that would eventually lead to a fully Digital Workflow. This means that we have taken nearly all analog art, film, and conventional plates out of our production process. We now bring in or design our own electronic art, make only electronic proofs (those being plotters and Dupont Digital Waterproofs) and digitally imaged photopolymer plates. We began this long journey with a few goals in mind; we wanted consistency, speed to market, lower waste, increased capacity, and hopefully some cost savings. We knew we were asking for big results. Could we reach these lofty goals?

When we started with our first pieces of digital imaging equipment in early '99, the technology was still fairly new. We had the 12th CDI (Cyrel Digital Imager) in North America and we had to come up with ways to make it work. We did a lot of testing. We feel the key to our initial success with digital was the simple fact that we are not a prepress house working with print customers, but more like a printer with a trade shop housed within it's own building. In a nutshell, we are very high quality flexographic printer for preprint linerboard that just happens to have a fully capable prepress department with highly talented people. We had the luxury of making plates and putting them on our own in-house press, tweaking them with different curves and dot structures to determine what works best. Let's face it; most trade shops do not have the advantage of making plates and putting them on press just to see what they get. Unless you have some close friends who are ready and willing to give up valuable press time.

Our evolution into a fully digital workflow was somewhat gradual. It is by no means something we launched into overnight. When we first installed the equipment in '99 we completed the year only running about 48% digital through our facility. In 2000, we had a marked improvement to 61% and in '01-'02 we jumped to over 80% digital. We recently installed a new digital platesetter, an Esko Graphics CDI Advance 50" x 80". It is equipped with the latest edition of the Power Beam Laser split into 8 beams. The system is capable of engraving a 50" x 80" plate at its' highest resolution in about 38 minutes. Now with our new system we are at a point where 91% of our total workflow is digital. This rate of usage has made us approximately 8% of Dupont's total sales for digital plate materials in the United States.

The thing to keep in mind when looking at going digital is that the technology is constantly evolving. The electronic equipment, including both hardware and software, is always improving. With the plate-imaging technology becoming faster, we have found that the electronic processing equipment behind it needs to be turned over about every 24 months. Keeping in mind that we were already 70-80% digital, our recent upgrade to full digital implementation had to include all new hardware, software, and imaging equipment. The hardware upgrades were a conversion from Unix based Barco to NT based Esko workstations with 24" flat panel displays. Software is Esko Packedge with Backstage. Proofing was upgraded to next generation Dupont Digital Waterproof and 60" wide HP Plotters. The photopolymer imaging equipment is, as previously mentioned, the next generation 50" x 80" CDI. The eventual goal is for imaging on sleeves in the round. Considering our press size of 98" wide, we don't know if or when we may get to this point.

The benefits of going into a fully digital workflow are many, with two coming to the forefront: Being recognized as a "World Class" award winning flexographic printer and being able to compete with the other quality benchmarks for packaging; litho and gravure. There is no doubt that digital is the future of flexo. We have proven this with the attainment of our lofty goals. We are more consistent by creating everything with first generation digital outputs. We are much faster and have more capacity when we can image a 50" x 80" plate in just 38 minutes. We have reduced our waste from 10 % in 1998 to a factor of only 2.2% today. We have cost savings by eliminating film usage and storage. Finally, there is undeniable savings in press changeover time and increased efficiencies in our total prepress workflow. The moral of the story is that, yes, it is a long and expensive journey to get to the point of a fully digital workflow. Especially when you start early and would be considered somewhat of a pioneer.