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Konica Minolta bizhub 8050 & bizhub PRO 1050
The Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1050 & bizhub 8050 helped a shop of eight employees produce nearly 6 million copies a month – a total of 71 million copies in 2004 – for Print Services of Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina.
The Client
John Fabian, Manager of Print Services of Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina
The Situation
Eight years ago, John Fabian, Manager of Print Services of Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina recognized an emerging trend that was altering the landscape of the print production industry – new technologies that offered higher speeds and better image quality for lower costs.
With this insight, the decision was made to go from a full-blown offset print plant to a digital copier and printer shop that would outsource work it was unable to produce. Demand grew immediately, and it was quickly realized that redundancy was vital given the amount of benefit books and training manuals being reproduced each month.
The Challenge
Fabian purchased his first four Konica Minolta copier devices. By 2000, he and his team of seven were producing 3.9 million black & white copies per year on three of its four 7075s, and in 2003 that volume grew to 9.0 million—without adding staff. However, color jobs were still done off the premises. And Fabian recognized the need for color was growing, and that lost revenues associated with not being able to output color in-house would mount quickly.
The Solution
Based on his experience with Konica Minolta copier equipment, he decided to give their 50ppm production color device – the Konica Minolta 8050 copier – a try. It became apparent immediately that the the Konica Minolta 8050 copier would bring additional revenue and efficiencies to the shop, and it soon proved to reduce outsourcing costs from $25K–$35K per month, to under $10K. Outsourcing savings realized in the first four months totaled over $186K. A typical cost-saving project at Fabian’s shop may be color copying 800 full-color brochures. By not outsourcing, the shop saves over $3,000, and the turnaround time is dramatically reduced for the customer.
The Proof
“Our customers started asking us to do their projects in-house, not only because of faster turnaround, but because in their opinion the 8050 delivers an equal if not better than quality product than the offset color press.” Fabian said “And we’re not talking about jobs that are unsophisticated, we’re talking about jobs that entail gloss, full-bleeds and full-color covers.”
Fabian and his team are now producing 1.4 million impressions per year on the 8050 – and the shop shows no signs of slowing their color production.
And then came bizhub …
In January 2005, the BCBS of South Carolina print shop became one of the first to welcome Konica Minolta’s powerful, durable, 105-ppm production printer/copier – the Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1050. The bizhub PRO 1050 was immediately put to work and registered 920,000 impressions in its first twenty days of use.
While the Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1050 is a completely new design and product-type for Konica Minolta, operator training for the staff at BCBS of South Carolina was over in less than a day. In fact, the operator was ready to get started using the machine as soon as it was installed.
“It is a tribute to Konica Minolta’s engineering that this device is so similar to their existing devices,” said Fabian. “My operator wanted the trainer to leave her alone because she was so comfortable with the device from the moment she saw it.”
A Custom Solution
One of the primary needs for the high-speed production devices in the print shop is the printing of client insurance packs. Data files, hundreds to thousand at a time, can either contain no insurance card or can include one of four card stocks as the first page and 100 additional duplexed pages of policy information. Based on multiple pieces of information included in each of the files, a determination has to be made if card stock is need for the packet and, if so, which card is to be selected and printed on as the first page. The card is printed to one of four pre-printed stocks (in pre-defined trays), the body is selected as plain paper, and each packet, card and body, is stapled together for the finished product.
To accomplish this job, the print shop had a custom proprietary software solution created that was required to be installed on each of the two existing 110-ppm production devices from a different vendor. The solution was tethered to each 110-ppm product and required the print shop to contact the vendor and have their engineer visit to make even minor corrections.
With its ability for the user to “name” the type of stock and the drawer that it resides in, Fabian wanted to use the Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1050 to offload some of the client packets from the other two devices. Because the current program was designed only to work with the other devices, Fabian turned to Konica Minolta’s System Engineering Center (SEC), a custom software development division of Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A, for multiple software options, consisting of third party solutions and SEC’s own developed solution – Konica Minolta Dispatcher PRO.
By installing Dispatcher Pro on a PC prior to the print jobs being sent to the Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1050, the data stream could be parsed, and altered as needed, without any disruption to the existing process. In fact, a week after installing Dispatcher Pro, IT had made some more changes in the data for the jobs. Before Dispatcher Pro, they would need to call an outside engineer and potentially wait for months to get the changes implemented, costing them lot of money. However, with Dispatcher Pro, SEC simply instructed Fabian to just copy and paste some basic data and he was up and working with changes in minutes.
As an open, configurable solution, Dispatcher Pro gives the print shop the flexibility to use whatever device they choose to complete this job. In addition, Dispatcher is also able to handle many of the print shop’s scanning tasks such as automated scanning, despeckling and deskewing – eliminating the need for additional software license costs.
The Results
Konica Minolta has become the manufacturer of choice at the Fabian’s in-plant reproduction facility – now home to four Konica Minolta 7075s, two 7085s, a bizhub PRO 1050 and an bizhub 8050 (color device). The equipment is supported by eight computers, a server and two 80-ppm duplex scanners, and interacts with: Adobe Acrobat; Objectif Lune; Quite Imposing Plus; Pit Stop; Scansoft’s PaperPort and OmniPage; and many Microsoft applications.
Today, Fabian’s shop of eight employees produces nearly 6 million copies a month, a total of 71 million copies in 2004. In the last five years, Fabian has only added one employee to the print shop; however, productivity has gone from an output ratio of 3.9 million impressions per person in 2000 to 9 million impressions in 2004. Furthermore, the print shop has achieved a B&W per copy cost of less than $.0172, including the devices, paper, toner, labor and all facility operating costs. Fabian credits the advancement in the equipment for much of this productivity and cost gains.
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