EFI Fires Up Ricoh Digital System For Astra Zeneca

Following installation of a new EFI/Ricoh digital printing system, leading global pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca can now produce mono documents faster providing a more efficient internal printing

Following installation of a new EFI/Ricoh digital printing system, leading global pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca can now produce mono documents faster providing a more efficient internal printing service.

Astra Zeneca develops and manufactures a comprehensive portfolio of products for the pharmaceutical industry.

At the company's R and D headquarters in S?dert?lje (Sweden) the image, print and copy department handles all digital printing requirements for the site ranging from short run on demand to high volume printing.

The department needed to upgrade its existing Ricoh mono digital printer and approached their local Ricoh distributor, Carl Lamm.

Lamm recommended Ricoh's powerful AF2105 mono digital printer with EFI's Fiery EB-105EX print controller.

Niklas Engsoo, print and finishing assistant, Astra Zeneca, explained: "We decided to purchase the EFI/Ricoh solution as it met our needs in terms of production capabilities, and we knew the EFI server would guarantee reliability and fast processing, which was exactly what we needed." The EFI EB-105EX controller, developed by EFI specifically for Ricoh, handles the most complex graphics and variable data content for high-volume mono output.

The controller supports PCL6 and true Adobe PostScript 3 to give users the power to create and print visually rich documents from virtually any application.

Combined with the Aficio systems, the Fiery Driven EB-105EX offers maximum efficiency, consistent high-quality imaging and superior printing performance from document creation to job management.

Engsoo commented: "There has been a dramatic increase in digital printing requirements over the past few years - 99% of the work we produce is now digital and we no longer have to spend hours photocopying.

We produce a variety of documents ranging from business cards to educational material to posters with job lengths varying from 50 to 20,000, so it is vital that we have a reliable printing solution in place which can meet our needs." The new installation joins the department's existing Ricoh AF1085 mono digital printer together with other devices all driven by EFI Fiery technology.

The Fiery EB105-EX controller offers speed, reliability and advanced performance in receiving and processing data.

Engsoo added: "This is particularly important as I can now send a high-volume job to print before I go home, safe in the knowledge that it will be ready for when I arrive at work the next morning.

This increases productivity and means we can provide a much more efficient service." One of the features of the Fiery EB-105EX includes EFI's Command Workstation, a printing workflow application designed for centralised print job management.

It enables job merging and editing, override of finishing options and re-ordering of print queues.

The operator can give priorities to individual jobs and can also group jobs that require specific machine configurations, (such as booklet making) or paper types.

In addition, Command Workstation offers load balancing, archiving of files for accessing and re-printing later, a Job Log window providing detailed information on each print job, and thumbnail and full-screen job previews for remote job management.

"We receive files from around the company via email or the intranet in a number of formats including PDF, PowerPoint presentations and Word documents.

Jobs are sent to the Command Workstation where any changes to settings such as imposition, scale or spot colour calibration are made, before printing takes place.

The entire job process is simple yet efficient and enables us to manage jobs effectively," said Engsoo.

He concluded: "The new EFI/Ricoh solution has increased flexibility and productivity, ensuring we can not only meet our customers' printing demands, but also provide high quality results.

Looking ahead, we are considering investing in EFI's variable data printing software to further increase our production capabilities.".

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