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Opens in new tab Chroma creates the ‘ideal sheet’ with Imp and saves up to 10%
Chroma was the first online printing company in Poland to launch a comprehensive online shop, transforming how customers ordered customised print products.
Chroma Printhouse is Poland’s largest online printing company and a market leader in the sector. Its online shop allows customers to configure each order by choosing from numerous options, including paper type, finishing and folding.
Alongside making print ordering more transparent, Chroma aims to process every job as efficiently as possible. This becomes challenging when more than 1,000 orders arrive each day.
For several years, Chroma used software supported by a dedicated team of experienced DTP specialists. Their main responsibility was to manually inspect every imposed sheet produced each day.
The moment you’re doing over 1000 jobs every day, you realize that this is becoming a very tedious and repetitive full-time job for them. The biggest risk for us was that we were not able to maximally utilise their experience to create a real added value to our company, so we started looking for ways to further automate our sheet optimization.
Andrzej Nowak
Deputy Director at Chroma
Using AutoIMP to look for ‘the ideal sheet’
Together with the Polish reseller PM Software, Chroma started looking through automation solutions. Very quickly they started looking at a solution combining callas pdfToolbox Server and InSoft IMP to do test their sheet optimization.
Savings over those six weeks was around 243 000 PLN, which is over 54.000 euro that Chroma Print was able to save.
Arkadiusz Szymosz
Owner of PM Software
“AutoImp, as our combined solution is called, brings several technologies together to fully automate the generation, analysis and approval of print sheets,” explains Arkadiusz Szymosz. “The main goal is to generate the most profitable imposed sheets possible. All jobs must meet their production deadlines while being printed as cost-effectively as possible.”
AutoImp uses pdfToolbox to automate quality control and preflight checks, ensuring that only production-ready PDFs enter the Imp workflow. Imp then optimises the sheets and creates the imposed PDF files. AutoImp adds a flexible layer of rules that determines which jobs should be imposed and when.
To optimise Chroma’s workflow, PM Software created custom formulas in AutoImp that generate the “ideal sheet” before it reaches the printer, minimising media waste.
“The goal was to reduce media waste even further,” says Arkadiusz. “Creating these formulas for Chroma was not easy because we had to consider not only production deadlines, but also the many variables associated with each job.”
More than €54,000 saved in just six weeks
PM Software implemented the “ideal sheet” formula in AutoImp and ran a six-week trial at Chroma, comparing it with the company’s existing Metrix workflow. Both solutions processed the same 3.9 million square metres of ordered print jobs and calculated the production cost per square metre.
The result? AutoImp reduced the cost per square metre by more than 10% compared with Metrix.
“Over those six weeks, Chroma saved around PLN 243,000, which is more than €54,000,” says Arkadiusz.
With this solution, we can save a considerable amount of money while freeing our experienced DTP team from tedious, repetitive tasks. This allows us to make full use of their knowledge and experience.
Andrzej Nowak
Deputy Director at Chroma
“After the trial, it was clear that AutoImp was the right solution and that we should move forward with its implementation,” explains Andrzej. “We can save a considerable amount of money while freeing our experienced DTP team from tedious, repetitive tasks. This allows us to make full use of their knowledge and experience to further optimise our print operations.”
“We were already convinced of the added value that Imp could offer printers when it came to sheet optimization,” David Van Driessche, CTO at Four Pees explains. “However, it’s great to be able to work with integrators like Arkadiusz who go the extra mile and want create concrete examples that give you real numbers. I believe that the AutoImp solution that he has made can create benefits for a lot of printers all around the world, and we’re looking forward to see where we can optimize sheet optimization next.”
David van Driessche was CTO of Four Pees at the time, but is now Chief Evangelist at callas software.
