|
|
|
Being analogue-based prior to its hardware upgrade with Canon, print jobs for ANU's print room couldn't be sent directly to the printers via the University network. Instead, jobs had to arrive as hardcopy or if sent through electronic means - such as e-mail - had to be printed to hardcopy for scanning.
"Before the recent upgrade, we were operating an analogue print room here," said Darren Vincent, manager of ANU's print room. "This meant, for example, that we had to physically scan in jobs as hardcopy - at a maximum 22 pages per minute - before we could reproduce them."
With ANU's print room competing with external print houses for business, this situation was becoming problematic as it meant the University wasn't as cost-effective as its competitors - primarily due to the extra time it would be taking to complete tasks which were unheard of at digitally-based print businesses.
The Canon Solution
- High volume Canon imageRUNNER iR105 devices were installed to create the foundations of a high-speed digital environment.
- Velocity software, created by Electronics For Imaging (EFI), allows ANU's print room to manage its printing equipment, increasing efficiencies.
A common job for the ANU print room is the thesis works for students (which can often run to 300-400 pages each), in addition to the class and study notes for students. It also caters for the widely varying needs of the 5000 staff and 10,000 students of the university; churning out around an estimated 8 million impressions annually.
Accordingly, the Canon devices it installed needed to be high-volume, digital devices. Canon's imageRUNNER iR105 met that need through its highly productive 105 ppm A4 output; integrated Image Server and huge 7,650-sheet paper capacity among other attributes.
Managing these print jobs, meanwhile, is the Velocity workflow software application created by Canon's long time development partner, Electronics For Imaging (EFI). Canon offers this solution with its own range of printing devices, including the award-winning imageRUNNER family.
Velocity enables users to dramatically increase efficiency by harnessing the "hidden" speed of their printing equipment (including a large selection of older and 3rd party equipment) by directing print jobs to the most efficient output device at hand, including print output on multiple devices.
For example, a print job sent to Velocity comprising multiple colour and black & white pages could actually have these elements printed separately on a colour and a black & white device, before being collated as one document at the conclusion of printing on the iR105, in order to save time and money. Similarly, a large black & white job could be sent simultaneously to three imageRUNNER iR105s resulting in an effective print speed of 315 pages per minute - seriously fast.
"ANU is moving towards 'print on demand' so we needed a system that allowed us to work with machines from different manufacturers yet control them from one interface. The software could not be proprietary," explained James Livingstone, Contracts Administrator, Australian National University. "A member of The University's Computer Information Systems reviewed the different options available and found that Velocity was the best solution for what we want to achieve."
- Print room staff at ANU can now easily accept electronic material, in addition to hardcopy, for speedy output through the Canon/EFI solution.
- An average time saving of 10-15 minutes per job rapidly adds up to hours of extra productivity per day for print room staff.
For print room staff, the arrival of the Canon/EFI solution has been a quantum leap from the not-too-distant days where it couldn't print digitally from an image or document stored on disk or sent via an e-mail.
Further, with the Velocity software powering its new imageRUNNER devices, in addition to some legacy equipment, the speed with which jobs are produced has been optimised and staff are really noticing appreciable time benefits.
"With thesis work, we can get some colour mixed in with black & white pages. Before we had to scan all of this just to get the job out of the machine," explains Mr Vincent. "With the new equipment, we just load it all into Velocity and run the job. Depending on how big the job is, this can save 10-15 minutes."
According to Mr Vincent, the overall quality of the imageRUNNER iR105s hasn't gone unnoticed, citing it as a dramatic improvement over analogue, and adding that he is very happy with the solution - which originally began as a trial.
"While this initially started as a trial because we were the first people in Canberra to get an iR105 with Velocity software, we'll be sticking with it now. We're not going to change," enthused Mr Vincent.
|
|
