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Gardners leads the way in large format workflow integration.

PerfectProof solutions streamline workflows, improving consistency in colour quality and increasing productivity

When you first walk into the light and airy state-of-the art digital pressroom at Gardners, the feeling you experience could only be described as sheer awe. You certainly do not expect to see no less than 26 large format digital print systems, working nonstop in what is a surprisingly calm and orderly environment. “And that’s not even all,” adds Richard Gardner, “we are expecting another 5 NUR large-format Expedios to arrive soon!”

Following a two year planning period, ?12-million-turnover Gardners has recently moved to the 3.5 acre site in Cardiff’s Eastern approaches, which comprises 2 factories totalling 75,000 square feet. The new site can comfortably house all Gardners’ existing equipment while offering scope for future expansion. One can’t fail but wonder if Richard Gardner had this in his mind when he started the company 33 years ago offering screen printing services. “We ventured into digital back in 1994-95”, explains Richard, “and initially I thought we could continue running with both but deep in my mind I believed that digital was the future of large format print. The amount of traditional screen printing we do nowadays does not exceed 5-10%.”

The 100-strong company holds a number of outdoor advertising related patents and even sources its own materials from China with a big focus on recyclable stocks and polyethylene. It counts most major retailers amongst its client list as well as leading outdoor advertising specialists JC Decaux , and many more. Today Gardners sees itself as a Digital Solutions Graphics company. High volumes, quick turnaround and a special emphasis on fulfilment are key elements for the 24-hour operation which covers virtually all large-format market applications and more. “We focus on the process and what the technology can do, not the market sector, “adds Richard.

Dealing with complexity and demanding turnarounds
With such a complex equipment configuration and a highly demanding 24-hour production schedule, Gardners knew they had to streamline the workflow that was driving all this digital equipment. Kristel Moncarey, Software Digital Manager at Gardners says:” We receive files from all over the place, sometimes 700 or 800 per week from just one customer, which all had to be opened and checked manually before. We also had no way of checking, without going to print, that all elements on the file were correct or what the colour was going to be like. In addition, all tiling and placing of bleed and trim marks had to be done manually resulting in a very time-consuming process prone to human error.” “We had different versions of drivers, with different profiles and some of the RIPs driving the machines would not queue automatically which was slowing down throughput. In general it would take us 4 hours to put together a 48-page file from start to finish”, continues Kristel.

Gardners undertook an intensive research process which lasted 9-12 months in order to find the right workflow partner for their business. “Many manufacturers had a real attitude“, Richard is quick to observe. “We are possibly the largest company of our kind in the UK and we needed to work with an organisation that would be flexible enough to support all of our existing printing devices successfully”, he adds. The company invested in a total of 6 PrintFactory RIPs and 15 drivers from PerfectProof which are driving all current equipment except the Dotrix and the Zund cutters. At the same time, an Enfocus Pitstop Server was installed to deal with incoming files. Two more PrintFactory RIPs and two drivers will be added when the new Expedios arrive and PerfectProof is also working to add support for the Dotrix and the Zunds very soon.

PerfectProof: Reliability and automation
With support from PerfectProof, Gardners and their inhouse studio team have completely re-engineered the production workflow. Customers can now log on to the Gardners dedicated internet portal to drop their files. These are then picked up by the Enfocus Pitstop Server which has currently 3 queues configured, one for regular checks and two for re-sampling PDF files to a lower resolution for on-screen approval by the customer. This saves a lot of time by automating some recurrent tasks such as converting black only elements in “rich” black or automatically cropping PDFs to the trimmed size. It also eliminates errors early on by checking on spot colours and RGB elements or by identifying other missing elements such as fonts or high res images.

A PrintFactory License server distributes the licenses over the network for all the RIPs in the system, thus eliminating the need for expensive dongles to be located on PC’s in the production area.
Once the files have gone through Pitstop they are then passed on to the PrintFactory Editor. Kristel has nothing but praise for its functionality: “The big change is that we now use templates for preparing large billboards, banners and storm covers. Tiling and adding bleed and trim marks are now automated. Preparing an ultra-large billboard for production now takes 2 to 5 minutes, compared with 1545 minutes doing it in the old way.
Using Editor, problems that would have normally appeared at the printing stage can now be caught on screen and corrected early on, saving us valuable time and wastage. We can replace low res images with high res versions and make colour changes easily. The PerfectProof solution gives us security and automation.”

Last minute edits on PDF files are now possible without the need to return to the originating application and existing Illustrator templates for the Zund cutters can be converted to Editor templates in a few clicks.

Consistent colour quality and significant productivity increase
The PerfectProof solution is bringing another massive transformation to Gardners, one to do with colour integrity across their printers. Before the PerfectProof installation, the company had no control on input and output colours. Colour management was applied on every file by printing test prints on the production machines. Instead of working with calibrated printers, the colours were corrected in the file itself. Different RIPs and versions of RIPs resulted in inconsistent colour quality and caused a significant productivity loss and a lot of waste on expensive ink and media. The PrintFactory Color engine, RIPs and printer drivers are now all configured to the same standard allowing consistent color reproduction across all printers and medias used. This means that files RIPped for one printer can easily be repurposed without manual intervention for production on any of the other Gardners printers if needed.

Kristel explains:”Now that installation of the RIPs is complete we can place our focus on colour. With the latest upgrade we should be able to enjoy improved ICC profile support specifically for wide format applications and this will complete the picture. It will allow us to create profiles for most of the media we use, and there are many of them. We hold regular stock of 15 or 16 different substrates but we actually use many more.”

A streamlined workflow and real tangible savings
The Gardners’ studio currently occupies six people but Kristel estimates that with the workflow automation that PerfectProof has brought, two of those could be easily re-deployed in other areas of the business once the colour management exercise is complete. What’s more, PerfectProof has delivered real tangible savings in capital outlay. Kristel says:” We can now buy new printers without the need for a printer driver and the fact that our workflow is so much more streamlined and human error has been taken out, enhances our overall throughput capacity so that we can get more jobs out with minimal downtime.”

So what next for Gardners? Richard Gardner concludes: “We operate in a very competitive sector driven by the lowest prices and the shortest turnaround. Our way of being successful is to focus on innovation and added value. That’s why we strive to be the first to discover new products and we push technology boundaries to the limit. Our collaboration with PerfectProof is a good example of this approach.” With such a dynamic attitude, it’s pretty certain that Gardners will continue to thrive and lead the way in large format applications.