Portland OR – Pamplin Media Group Oregon’s largest source of local news installed Workflow ESP automated prepress from Fusion Systems International into their Gresham Outlook print facility as part
of a strategy to better handle expanding press scheduling and improve print quality.
Like many publication printers Pamplin Media first needed a cost effective prepress workflow to provide digital integrity between proofing plating and the printed product.
Following an extensive evaluation of workflow options Pamplin Media selected Fusion Systems’ Workflow ESP running entirely on Mac OS X. Blake Jensen Production Manager reflects “Most workflows had some of Fusion’s features but Workflow ESP is more straight forward in its operation provides real automation and has a comprehensive (imposition) package for handling any type of publication or press template requirement.”
Procedures that use to take hours are now completed in minutes. “Work that required as much as four hours is now completed in one” comments Don Atwater Operations Manager at Pamplin Media Inc.
“Fusion’s Workflow ESP has really delivered and has cut prepress production time by roughly 40 percent.”
This reduction in prepress labor time is attributed to the workflow’s single-page processing capabilities advanced publication soft-proofing and automated post-RIP page pairing. Labor reductions and the
elimination of errors earlier in the production cycle combined with the migration to CTP positively impacted the entire production operation.
States Blake Jensen “We produce over 100 different publications every month and really needed a flexible and automated workflow solution. “One that could process multiple publications simultaneously in an automated fashion with absolute digital integrity proofing to ensure that every ad or page proofed and approved will always plate correctly”.
Since transitioning to the new workflow the newspaper has been able to comfortably run all of their prepress in a single shift while expanding printing across two shifts. For publications that print during
the second shift the workflow enables press operators to output digital flats to CTP imagers at the appropriate time of day based on press schedules.
Cost savings from the elimination of plate waste and faster make-ready is directly attributed to the systems digital integrity proofing throughout the prepress cycle. Blake Jensen points out “On the first
day of running the new workflow we caught three serious file separation errors in the publication proofing module that would have otherwise gone to press”.
The system automatically broadcasts post-RIP raster-PDFs of each page by publication title date and section onto the Fusion Publication Proofing System an internet-based portal for review approval and
remote proofing. These proofing files are exact representations of how the job will print because the proofing files are generated on the fly from the 1-bit TIFF separations data that is used for plating.
As pages are soft-proofed and approved on-line by editorial staff and external commercial clients the corresponding high-resolution pre-RIPed pages are automatically forwarded for page pairing and
output to the CTP imagers. This takes place both during the main shift and during the second shift long after all prepress personnel have left for the day.
Pamplin Media includes the Lake Oswego Review West Linn Tidings Gresham Outlook Beaverton Valley Times Estacada News Clackamas Review Forest Grove News-Times Oregon City News Sandy Post The Times serving Tigard and Tualatin East County News Lifestyles Northwest Sherwood Gazette Southwest Community Connection The (Sellwood) Bee and the King City Regal Courier and many others. They also provide contract publishing management services for approximately 30 monthly and annual publications and full-service printing and mailing services. The company also publishes six Coupon Tabloid shopper newspapers.
About Pamplin Media Inc.
Pamplin Media Inc. is a privately owned media conglomerate operating in the Portland OR area. PMI owns the Portland Tribune and a group of 26 newspapers and several AM radio stations. Headquartered in
Clackamas OR the firm also has offices in Gresham Sandy Lake Oswego Forest Grove Estacada and Sellwood as well as a printing facility in Gresham and a distribution center in Northeast Portland.
Please see:
http://www.pamplinmedia.com
About Fusion Systems International
Fusion Systems International a division of Color Technology Inc. of Portland OR is a leading independent developer of prepress workflow solutions for newspapers and the graphic arts industry. Since 1997 Fusion Systems International has been a Global Graphics Ltd. OEM specializing in prepress software and hardware integration to streamline and automate prepress workflow processes.
For more information visit Fusion Systems at: http://www.fusionsystems.com call (503) 261-7395
or e-mail inquiry to WORKFLOW@FusionSystems.com.
