Jan 29 2010
Swiss global financial services company, UBS has streamlined its printing operation by installing two Kodak Versamark VL2000 Printing Systems and a Kodak NexPress S3000 Digital Production Color Press. The investment means the company no longer has to outsource some of its graphical color printing volume, and can instead produce complex, full-color transactional documents in-house.
New era in transactional printing
The UBS Output Center handles a wide range of transactional documents, including account statements, securities trading statements, portfolio reports and asset statements. It prints around 250 million A4 pages of personalized content a year. The Versamark VL2000 Systems have introduced the company to the benefits of inkjet printing, helping it produce top-quality color and black-and-white documents.
Rigorous evaluation and testing
UBS carried out a thorough market evaluation, drawing up a 150-point catalog of requirements: “High production speed, low total cost of ownership, and consistently high print quality were our number one priorities,” says Urs Amrein, Director, Output & Mailing Service Delivery at UBS. “It was these key criteria that tipped the scales in favor of the KODAK Systems.”
However, Amrein wanted reassurance that any new system could cope with the intensity of the UBS’ printing environment, so he tested the VL2000 with a complex file: “We wanted to be sure that any system we installed was robust enough for our needs, so we tested the machine for at least six to eight hours under extreme conditions,” explains Amrein. “The VL2000 didn’t disappoint – its consistency was incredible.”
Smooth implementation
UBS received extensive support with the implementation from Kodak’s team of professionals. The first production runs on the two inkjet color printing systems began just a week after the start of the installation. The systems, which use low-cost dye-based inks, work with 600 x 600dpi resolution at a speed of 75 m/min.
Fast and flexible
One of UBS’ requirements was that the systems can be used separately for simplex printing, and can work in unison for duplex printing. The two VL2000 Systems have their own web unwinding and winding modules. This delivers maximum flexibility for two-up duplex printing (double sided) on a single paper web, or independent two-up simplex (two A4 pages side by side for single-sided printing on two webs).
UBS’ set-up now delivers more than 1000 A4 pages a minute, a dramatic improvement on the 100 to120 pages a minute produced by its previous color toner printing systems. It’s at the year-end processing season when the VL2000s really prove their worth – between 30 and 35 million pages must be printed in just eight days. “Every one of our printing systems works flat out, 24 hours a day. At such a crucial period, we simply can’t afford any stoppages,” adds Amrein.
Full-color, complex transactional documents
The full-color capability of the VL2000 Systems is particularly useful for asset statements or other complex client documents that feature color charts and graphics. And even the black and white documents – such as regular account statements – that were previously produced on laser equipment are now created far more cost-effectively with the KODAK Inkjet Systems. All transactional documents are supplied from IT to the printing systems as AFP (IPDS) data streams and are processed by two Kodak Versamark CS300c System Controllers.
However, Amrein does not consider the VL2000 Systems only as transactional printing systems: “We want to also use them for production volume in the creative sector, which until now has been handled by the Print and Copy Center.”
As these documents are sent to production as PDF files, UBS plans to purchase a Kodak 700 Print Manager as a new controller in the foreseeable future, so that the PDF files can be processed directly for printing.
Amrein is in no doubt that UBS’ investment in the Kodak Versamark VL2000 Printing Systems has paid dividends: “Our relationship with Kodak has been a success from the outset. We’ve already benefitted from the company’s vast knowledge, and that is set to continue in the future.”