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- Nihon Web Printing Co., Ltd. (Japan)
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Graphic Imaging
[Corporate Profile]
Head Office: 6-9-26 Tsurumi, Tsurumi-ku, Osaka-shi, 538-0053 Japan
President: Nobuo Taguchi
Established: February 1965
Employees: 200
Nihon Web Printing Co., Ltd. boasts a consolidated system from pre-press processing to bookbinding and well-known, wide-ranging reliability achieved through outstanding production capabilities and product quality.
Nihon Web Printing Co., Ltd., a company which, as symbolized by its name “Web” (i.e. web paper), is looked up to as the leader in rotary offset processing, introduced Digital KonsensusPro (henceforth referred to as “DigikonPro”) into their facility in the year 2002, shortly after the product appeared on the market, and this has provided solutions to a wide range of management related issues.
In the market where even greater demands regarding lead-time reduction and product quality is expected, DigikonPro has proved to be outstanding as a tool for taking DDCP to the next level.
“Almost all our orders come from companies in the same field in which are active. We have spent the last forty years constantly pursuing methods and approaches to provide our customers with optimum satisfaction.”
The management stance embraced by Nihon Web as explained by its President, Nobuo Taguchi, is admirably clear. The first step in the conversion to rotary offset processing was positive investment in equipment and the creation of a flexible production system was part of a strategy to imbue the company with a structure different from that other enterprises operating in the same field.
“Our greatest strength is the ability to achieve short lead times by running the rotary offset machine 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”
On the other hand, Managing Director and Production Facility Manager Kazuhito Nishida stated that as well as lead times; product quality has become the target of heightening demands in recent years. “With the advance of digitalization, it is a fact that customers have developed greater expectations towards product quality starting from colour tone to the other quality elements.
In response to such market trends, the company's pre-press division is under pressure to produce colour proofs as close in quality as possible to the original print and as speedily as possible.
“Mail order catalogue jobs have proven particularly difficult. These catalogues contain a great number of photographs and the same photographs appear in a number of catalogues: this means that colour must be consistent. With previous methods of proof print on the actual stock, it was impossible to avoid colour deviations, making it impossible to meet lead times. Also, inkjet produces unstable colour reproducibility and makes it impossible to check screen patterns (moiré),” stated Director and General Manager of First and Second Pre-press Facilities Yoshiaki Yamaguchi, describing the blind alley situation extant at the time. “The timing of our decision to consider introduction of DDCP coincided with the debut of DigikonPro. We felt that the product's ability to output A1 size on a halftone dot DDCP and the function that allows changes to density were particularly attractive,” he went on to explain.
Looking back, Company President Mr. Taguchi reflected, “I was often told by staff members, “That product is just what we need - we really must buy it!””
“When DigikonPro was first introduced, we carried out first proofs for mail order catalogues from proof print on actual stock and proofs for confirmation from DigikonPro output. Now, however, we rely completely on DigikonPro output. This is a result of consideration of colour stability and lead time problems. Our customers have also expressed the opinion that “Proof print on actual stock is no longer necessary,”” explained Mr. Yamaguchi.
Fine reproducibility and stability that was not available until now. Availability of channel settings that allow solid colour changes is also an invaluable asset.
DigikonPro is currently being used with a wide range of Nihon Web Printing colour proofs. “Although I feel that colour proofing from actual stock is the basis colour proofing, the reproducibility realized by DigikonPro is now competitive enough. When looking at output from DigikonPro, even I felt that this represented a great advance,” stated Company President Mr. Taguchi. Mr. Yamaguchi added, “I was amazed that there was absolutely no sludge produced during development process. This means that we can achieve really stable colour proofing.”
Reflecting the response from the printing facility, Managing Director Mr. Nishida stated, “Staff have reported their opinion that even when switching over from colour proofing on actual stock, colour matching can be achieved without problems.”
Staffs have reported that the DigikonPro's advantage that allows changes to solid colour density has enabled heightened work efficiency. “Because, you see, clients demand stronger Y100/M100 solid density of price characters.”
“Although in the past, there have been cases where proofs with low solid colour density have been produced necessitating repeat processing, DigikonPro allows the user to set channels with higher solid colour density settings in advance, ensuring a smooth work process flow,” explained Mr. Yamaguchi.
“Moreover,” Mr. Yamaguchi continued, “Because we no longer need analogue Konsensus dedicated operators, these staff can be allocated to colour proof checking tasks within the company, giving us a major human resource advantage.” In this way, DigikonPro has contributed not only to solution of manpower shortage related problems, but also to achievement of an even higher degree of reliability from the standpoint of the customer.
DigikonPro, latest cutting-edge rotary offset process, and next - CTP. This is the structure to achieve the fastest possible digital work process.
“As far as our company is concerned, introduction of DigikonPro was the first step in the process of environmental consolidation aimed at introduction of CTP. In fact, the high-speed rotary offset machine incorporating the latest technology was installed after introduction of DigikonPro. In addition, we also acquired a new TrueFlow as the RIP, establishing an environment that would enable introduction of CTP at any time required,” explained Company President Mr. Taguchi.
“The issue remaining to be addressed is colour matching between each of the individual printers,” stated Mr. Yamaguchi, going on to say, “DigikonPro and CTP are a pair and I am confident that the stability thus achieved will lead to resolution of colour matching problems.”
“When I think of the volume of work and data that comes in from various sources, I feel that the necessity to update production equipment will arise again in future. In this regard, the introduction of CTP is still a transit stop on the way,” explained Mr. Nishida.
“It is our goal to become the “top runner” not in terms of corporate size, but in terms of content. That is our unchanging philosophy. That's why I regard our employees as colleagues who are as important to me as my family. In our effort to meet the needs of customers, we aim for uncompromising excellence in both equipment and product quality,” stated Company President Mr. Taguchi, reflecting his confident vision of the company's future, based on an unshakeable management philosophy endorsed by past achievements.
Nihon Web Printing Co., Ltd. (May, 2003)
