CASE STUDY

Fuelling future growth with intelligent production

Transactional and omnichannel communication

Objective

Meet increasingly complex customer requests for high quality individualised communication by expanding production capability, optimising efficiency and increasing flexibility.

Complementing its existing inkjet solution, QITS integrated a new ColorStream 6500 Chroma continuous feed inkjet system and three imagePRESS C10000VP toner presses, linked by a PRISMAproduction workflow.

Challenges

• Growing volume of short-run jobs

• Emphasis on accuracy and security

• Highest quality and colour precision

• Need for process optimisation

Achievements

• Seamless, efficient production

• Exceptional uptime

• Flexibility for ultra-short runs

• Highest quality digital output

We really valued the collaboration with the Canon product team and how they took note of our specific requirements.

Philipp Schneider,
Project Manager, QITS

Intelligent integration

From state-of-the-art premises in Ratingen, QITS offers IT services, transactional document production and processing, and managed omni-channel communications. Clients are medium-sized enterprises including banks, property companies, insurance and energy providers, who choose QITS to support their digital transformation.

Over 20 years the company has earned an excellent market reputation as a leader in output management, production intelligence, business process outsourcing and handling highly sensitive and business-critical customer data.

The road to full digital colour

“We always said we needed to offer digital quality that came very close to offset,” reflects Oliver Winkelmann, “otherwise we would never make the switch successfully. It took time to tackle those reservations, but we believed in the technology, built additional expertise and worked hard to promote the benefits. Gradually we moved most work to full colour digital production.”

“At some point, the debate was over. Quality stopped being an issue and our customers saw how they could optimise processes and eliminate offset pre-prints. By 2018, inkjet had become a quality standard, even for our large direct mail clients.”

1000 individual jobs a day, and growing

Throughput of 40 million documents a year, equating to around 150 million pages, means that production uptime is mission-critical for QITS. Expanding print production was part of a comprehensive investment programme including a new fully automated high-speed mail inserting line, following an Industry 4.0 philosophy of end-to-end process optimisation.

Having considered various options, QITS came down in favour of Canon’s single supplier solution. This centres on a new ColorStream 6500 Chroma continuous inkjet press with Chromera ink, together with three imagePRESS C10000VP toner presses with PRISMAsync controllers. All four presses are linked using Canon’s PRISMAproduction workflow management software.

Jobs can also be moved between presses without any colour management adjustments. The entire production workflow across all devices is certified to FOGRA Process Standard Digital, giving QITS absolute certainty of cross-device calibration, colour accuracy and consistency.

According to Philipp Schneider, Project Manager, “it’s effectively a technical assurance for us and our customers that our blended inkjet and toner production concept really works, with no colour compromises.”