Inkjet & Digital Printing

Second Screen Truepress Jet520 Provides Disaster Insurance for Sebis Direct

Friday 08. February 2013 - Business continuity isn't just another term for backup. Good business continuity plans keep a company operating through disruptive events, such as a flood or fire.

In the aftermath of a natural or man-made occurrence, Sebis Direct Inc. can ramp up full-color variable data printing at its satellite facility in Brooklyn Heights, Ohio. Sebis, a document management process outsource service bureau headquartered in Bedford Park, Ill., kicked off 2013 with a new Screen Truepress Jet520 for its plant outside Cleveland. It is a mirror image of the inkjet web press already turning out compliant and transactional documents at Sebis’ suburban Chicago headquarters.
“Business continuity is absolutely essential for even holding a conversation with our customers and prospects,” said Wes Sanders, president. “The key is to have redundant capabilities in a facility that is far enough away from Chicago to be a complete disaster recovery/business continuity resource. The installation of the first Truepress Jet520 was so successful that we purchased an identical press for Cleveland.”
Barely nine months after Sebis began offering its customers a faster and more cost-effective method for generating bills, invoices, statements, policies and certificates with dynamic content and vibrant color, the company took delivery of the second Screen device.
“The Truepress Jet520 is the best overall configuration for us,” Sanders said. “The two devices give us a great deal of horsepower. Throughput at the Chicago plant is about 2.5 million impressions a day. Together, both presses will be able to produce 4.5 million impressions a day.”
Sanders established Sebis in 1989. The company long has relied on monochrome and color laser imagers. Sebis prints, finishes, assembles and delivers secure documents for the health care, insurance, government and utility sectors in 37 states and Canada. The Bedford Park location, which spans 70,000 square feet, operates around the clock, seven days a week.
With Hurricane Sandy shutting down large parts of New York and New Jersey, 2012 was a year to make anyone believe in disaster recovery. Sanders was ahead of the curve. Launched in 2010, the 65,000-square-foot Ohio site sits a safe distance 350 miles from the Illinois headquarters. Like the main plant, document production takes place in a highly secure environment, with access controls, camera systems and emergency power generation.
With the addition of the new Truepress Jet520, the Ohio facility can print static content, variable data and full-color graphics in one pass directly onto blank paper rolls instead of onto preprinted shells. The press instantly accommodates document revisions. Color elements can change completely from page to page.
“We can bring the same security and accuracy to dynamic content and have total control of all colors on the document without maintaining a warehouse loaded with forms,” Sanders said.
As with Sebis’ first Truepress Jet520, the dual-engine duplex model prints both sides of the web roll at once, delivering excellent registration. It features a roll-to-sheet arrangement with dynamic perforation. Sebis combined the press with a paper handling line from Lasermax Roll Systems. The Truepress/Lasermax combination produces simple and complex perforations inline. Perfectly stacked bills, documents, forms and payment stubs with edge-to-edge color exit the system ready for assembly.
The Truepress Jet520 comes standard with the SV-110 high-speed parallel processing controller, incorporating the latest Adobe RIP. To derive the most benefit from the Truepress Jet520’s color capabilities and printing speed of 420 feet per hour, Sebis outfitted the new press with the innovative EQUIOS workflow. The company will integrate EQUIOS into its Chicago-area Truepress Jet520 this year.
EQUIOS, Screen’s Adobe PDF Print Engine 2-based digital front end, automatically extracts and caches shared reusable elements included in PDF and PDF/VT variable data. It quickly RIPs the data and outputs it to the printing device. Combining this processing with load balancing achieves an optimal printing environment. A built-in imposition function for variable data expands the application range available for the Truepress Jet520. In addition, EQUIOS’ unique inspection system provides a high level of accuracy for variable data-rich pages.
“EQUIOS is a powerful workflow that is similar to the file processing system conventional commercial printers use for CTP production,” Sanders said. “It improves color management and imposition, and expands our ability to print short-run color jobs and other projects that fall outside our normal transactional documents. The Truepress Jet520 allowed us to add print-on-demand books to our portfolio. We are showing high-quality newsletters and book samples to potential customers who don’t think of Sebis for those kinds of products. The Screen technology provides relevance as a print provider because we are fully digital.”