PCI Printing Sets Profitable New Course with EFI Pro 16h Hybrid Printers
PCI Printing is a print business with two locations in Alabama. The larger shop employs a staff of four in Atmore, just north of the Florida border. PCI Printing does double duty as an in-plant print provider for three casinos operated by PCI Printing’s parent company, Wind Creek Hospitality, and as a commercial print provider for its community and surrounding area. Clients include local businesses and institutions, with a good amount of walk-in business. Print offerings include posters, backlits, banners, rack cards, promotional items, a monthly publication and invitations. PCI Printing’s second location, a one-person shop in Montgomery, serves solely as the in-plant print provider for another Wind Creek casino.
PCI Printing is in the enviable position of being the only printer in Atmore and its surrounding area in Alabama. Its closest competitor is more than an hour’s drive away. While the company certainly enjoyed the benefits of having the local market locked up, it was also coping with labor issues and an outdated and inefficient production system that struggled to keep up with growing demand.
It is quite difficult for PCI Printing to find qualified equipment operators in its small town. “We get a lot of business, but my main challenge was staff size. It’s hard to find anybody with experience running equipment,” says Adam Nix, Production Supervisor for PCI Printing. “We couldn’t keep up with demand with the staff level we had.”
Seeking a Time-Saving Solution
Nix was also looking for the ability to print directly onto rigid media and to update cumbersome production processes. Producing foamcore board posters, for example, was an intensive exercise that involved printing on adhesive vinyl, waiting 15 to 20 minutes for the ink to dry before gluing the vinyl to the board and then waiting another eight hours if the job needed lamination. “For us, it was critical to be able to print directly onto rigid media. We do more than 50 foamcore boards a month, for example, so we were wasting a lot of time,” says Nix.
PCI Printing was incurring a lot of overtime as a result of staff shortages and the time-wasting mounting procedures. Nix and his staff were overburdened, and since they had difficulty meeting customer demand, the company was also outsourcing a substantial amount of printing. All of these challenges and inefficiencies increased turnaround time, erased profits on existing jobs and limited the ability of the company to take on more business and grow.
EFI LED Technology Delivers on All Levels
It was with these issues in mind that PCI approached Ricoh (Booth 3601), a leading EFI (Booth 301) reseller and an existing supplier to PCI for digital toner presses. “I asked Ricoh, ‘What can I do to print directly onto rigid media, cut production time and take steps out of my process,’” says Nix.
Ricoh recommended the 65 inch EFI Pro 16h LED hybrid flatbed/roll wide-format printer. The printer features an EFI Fiery proServer Core digital front end (DFE) — which was beneficial for PCI Printing because the staff was already familiar with EFI Fiery workflows on their Ricoh digital presses.
“I already used EFI Fiery DFEs and I knew EFI’s reputation in the industry,” Nix says. “Knowing all of that made the decision to add the EFI printer even easier.
“Ricoh has been a great partner for us,” he adds. “We’ve been with them for seven years, and they’ve always been there addressing our needs. Whenever someone comes into our shop, they always compliment us on the quality we output, and Ricoh has been a big part of that,” Nix says.
PCI Printing added two Pro 16h printers with the first going into the company’s Montgomery in-plant. “When I saw how great it was, I wanted one for my Atmore location too,” Nix says. The second printer was installed shortly afterwards.
PCI Printing’s new EFI LED printers offer a package of features to help ensure the lowest cost of ownership and superior image quality. They print in four colors plus white at a production speeds of 311 square feet per hour (29 square meters per hour), with up to 1,200 dpi output.
Boosting Profitability
The two EFI wide-format printers delivered everything PCI Printing was looking for. According to Nix, the company has streamlined production, increased output and become more profitable.
PCI Printing has cut printing time in half on most wide-format print jobs. Nix can, for example, print three, double-sided, 24x36-inch boards for the casinos in about 10 minutes, a vast improvement over the 30 to 45 minutes it used to take him. He can also print directly onto substrates up to two inches thick.
Other benefits include ink that cures instantaneously, lower ink costs, substantially lower running costs because the device uses less power and generates less heat than PCI Printing’s previous devices, and fantastic quality and color output.
Work that used to be outsourced, which Nix estimates to be about 15 to 20% of total revenue, has come back in house, and Nix can comfortably run both locations with the staff at hand, while cutting back on the draining 70-hour weeks he and his staff were putting in.
“We can now increase output to meet demand without expanding our staff, deliver jobs more quickly, cut costs, eliminate wasted time and reach a higher level of profitability,” Nix says. “I love having the machines. They’re great.”
