August 05, 2005
Printable and HP Enable LaVigne's Achievement of CIPPI Award
Integrated technologies from Printable Technologies, Inc. (Printable), a world leader in Web-to-Print Workflow and Variable Data Printing (VDP) solutions, and Hewlett Packard/Indigo enabled LaVigne Inc., Worcester, MA, to achieve CIP4 International Print Production Innovations (CIPPI) Honorable Mention for "Biggest Improvement in Efficiency and Customer Responsiveness as a Result of Process Automation." LaVigne documented process improvements in a number of areas including turnaround time, time to delivery from order, labor cost reduction, waste reduction, and customer satisfaction improvement.
"This award confirms our belief that business process automation is the future of our industry and that JDF is a technology that works. With a fully-automated Web-to-print workflow we can give our customers great response times, quick turns, and extremely short runs at a reasonable price," said Christopher Wells, President and CEO of LaVigne. "It's not often that you can find two companies like HP and Printable that will dedicate the resources needed to make something like this succeed. They are a critical part of our business!"
Before incorporating Printable's PrintOne Customer Center and HP Production Flow, LaVigne was producing about 200 jobs a month for about 100 customers. Now the company delivers 700 to 800 jobs monthly for more than 10,000 customers and can turn those jobs faster with fewer people. The PrintOne Customer Center creates a JDF job ticket that is used by LaVigne's MIS and directs the Production Flow including prepress, production, finishing, and shipping. "We no longer sell print; we are migrating into the communications business. Quality isn't a ‘value add' anymore; the value add now is our interactive service. Quality is assumed," added Wells.
"LaVigne is a 105-year old company that is as light on its feet as a 5-year old company. They are pioneers in digital printing and it has been exciting to help them achieve this high level of workflow automation," stated Coleman Kane, Printable President and CEO. "Working as a team with LaVigne and HP has also helped us evolve our products; we've spent many hours developing solutions to real problems that arise in the production workflow. It's our job to help our customers be successful."
"It's been nearly five years since the first data sheet came through PrintOne and Production Flow on LaVigne's production floor," added Francis McMahon, director, Digital Publishing, Hewlett-Packard, "and it's clear now that application-based, end-to-end configurations result in significantly improved efficiency for high-value on-demand and personalized printing. We're proud to have been part of the team with LaVigne and Printable."
LaVigne Inc. prides itself as being both one of the top 50 independent commercial printers and one of the top 10 fastest growing independent commercial printers in the US. Founded in 1898, LaVigne operates 24 hours per day, 6 days per week.
The graphic arts industry continues to recognize LaVigne's commitment to technology in trade publications and case studies highlighting the company's innovation and focused approach to the evolution of print communications. In fact, LaVigne has been profiled in over 100 articles and case studies worldwide.
LaVigne Inc.'s core competencies are in 2 - 8+ color conventional offset runs of 5,000 to 200,000+; shorter run, quick turn, 4-6 color digital printing that rivals offset for quality; On Demand Communications systems including web-to-print, trigger and event based variable data solutions, fulfillment on demand, data acquisition and management; training; mailing; kitting; and fulfillment.
HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, global services, business and home computing, and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended April 30, 2005, HP revenue totaled $83.3 billion. More information about HP (NYSE, Nasdaq: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.
Printable Technologies is a world leader in providing Web-to-Print and Variable Data Printing (VDP) Solutions to commercial and digital print service providers, ad agencies and direct marketing companies, and the enterprises using their services. Three modules - PrintOne Customer Center, Printable Dashboard, and Printable Manager – comprise the Printable System, delivering real-time integrated business communications applications, online ordering and e-commerce, versioned and variable documents, job submission, and file transfer.
Printable solutions easily integrate with ERP solutions such as Ariba, SAP, and Oracle; content management solutions like Documentum; accounting and shop floor management applications such as Prism and Quantum; and major digital production workflows from Hewlett-Packard, Canon, Xerox, NexPress, and more.
Today more than 500 service providers around the world use the Printable VDP and online workflow systems to serve more than 1,300 corporate customers. Improved efficiency for every aspect of the procurement process means printers enjoy higher revenues, new business growth, and better customer retention. For more information, go to www.printable.com.