By Tony Curcio
Wallace Graphics of Duluth, GA was founded as a one-man commercial printer in 1987 by John Wallace in Atlanta, GA. Today, the business is owned and operated by his two sons, Jonathan and Jake. As a multifaceted printer it offers digital, offset, and large format printing; direct mail services; kitting and fulfillment; promotional products; and printed apparel. The full-service commercial printer has never lost sight of its founder’s guiding principle to always be a “people first” printer.
Solving the Challenges
While consistently looking to innovate and increase efficiency, the company was encountering roadblocks. “We were processing jobs through customer service and prepress using mostly manual steps. This made it almost impossible to increase our throughput, especially when a large volume of jobs arrived at the same time. It also increased the time it took to enter and process these jobs, while leaving us more vulnerable to making production errors and missing client deadlines. We needed to create an ultra-efficient workflow that could accommodate this extra capacity, while helping our employees to manage their workload. We also needed to reduce the likelihood of making mistakes while becoming more responsive to our customers’ needs and deadlines,” says Anthony Guice, director of systems development, Wallace Graphics.
Enter Significans Automation
Wallace Graphics chose workflow integration specialist Significans Automation to implement these changes; the company develops and integrates customized solutions for printing and packaging. The final implementation featured Enfocus PDF Review, Switch, Pit Stop, and Phoenix, and leveraged the versatility of custom scripting using the Scripting Module and applications (apps) sourced from the Enfocus App Store, like XML Toolkit. It is a collection of tools that create, manipulate, and convert XML documents for ease of use within Enfocus Switch.
“We now have a clearer vision of what’s possible and it’s invigorating. We’ve built a lot together by partnering with Significans Automation, but I believe we are just getting started. For example, we’ve automated our direct mail order entry, data processing, and print file production and proofing. We’ve automated email intake and parsing to extract order data, work in progress folder creation, job-ticket copying, and material planning,” shares Guice.
Fast ROI
“We started to see tangible, measurable results in about a month or two,” points out Guice. “Plus, we can do so much more with the staff and equipment we already have. I’m estimating that we’ll recover our original investment in about 90 days. Today, we see the Significans Automation team as an extension of Team Wallace, and look forward to working together in the future.”
For an assessment of your workflow software systems, call Significans Automation at 877-463-4465. You’ll be directed not to a salesperson or a third party, but to one of our regional workflow automation and integration experts who has years of production floor experience.
Mar2024, Digital Output
