Ricoh has brought its newest TotalFlow solution to market that improves visibility into and streamlining of short run and on-demand book production.

The enhanced workflow system addresses the challenges book printers face who seek tools to seamlessly track and efficiently complete the kinds of jobs the modern book market desires.

“Book printers continue to integrate workflow into their businesses to find more efficiencies and they need tools to better help them track jobs from receipt to delivery,” says Jacques van Wyk, COO of Ricoh SA. “They also need to batch similar jobs for faster turnarounds and efficient resource utilisation.”

The new solution will be available in South Africa later in the year.

Managing operations and deadlines has never been harder for book printers as requests for short run jobs and on demand work increases. Keeping track of so many jobs can be incredibly time-consuming, and manually planning the most efficient way to use presses, paper and other resources, without missing any deadlines, can feel impossible. Ricoh’s digital book printing solution was developed to help printers resolve these issues by simplifying and automating many of the steps in short run digital production. Printers can use a single Web-based interface to develop pre-defined rules for sorting jobs, helping automate many of the manual steps, and batch similar jobs for simpler printing and finishing. Those facilities help increase job production, which results in more revenue and fewer headaches.

Capabilities of Ricoh’s new TotalFlow digital book printing solution include:

* Simple integration to printers’ electronic order, MIS and production systems;

* Easy addition of barcodes and custom marks to track jobs and drive finishing;

* Integrated preflight and imposition, minimising touch points, facilitating automation and use with pre-existing systems;

* Intuitive dashboard views of location and status of jobs, with customisable notifications;

* Automatic job batching to minimise turn time and waste; and

* Support for Ricoh cut sheet and continuous feed devices, as well as other vendors’ print and finishing equipment.

“Short run and on demand work makes publishing accessible to many more printers,” says Van Wyk. “We alleviate the pains and make it easier for book printers to keep track of complex operations, improve efficiencies, and decrease turnaround times. They gain operational clarity over the numerous jobs they have at any given time and automate time-consuming tasks such as imposition and manually transitioning between steps during job runs.”