The Graphic Communications industry continues to reinvent itself. Today’s print service providers (PSPs) continue the artisan traditions of Gutenberg while leveraging modern technologies to advance print, mail, and marketing services. Much of the innovation is driven by the changing needs of their clients who need an integrated and efficient partner to procure print and marketing services.

Changing client demands bring the new challenges of faster turnaround times, lower costs, and dealing with a higher number of jobs. WhatTheyThink’s 2023 Printing Outlook found that 36% of printers see pricing as a core business challenge, while 29% cited increasing plant productivity — two sides to the same cost issue. Printers looking to succeed under these market conditions should respond with customer enablement, digital printing, and intelligent workflow automation technologies.

For decades, Ricoh has been providing leading edge digital print technologies and software solutions for the graphic arts industry. The degree to which the technology is implemented into the PSPs existing infrastructure and client mix is just as critical. PSPs can leverage Ricoh’s depth of experience in implementations and support staff to get the most out of the technology.

Yurchak Printing leveraged the Ricoh Pro VC60000 continuous-feed, color inkjet printer to provide their publishing clients with cost-effective short-run book printing. Read on to discover Yurchuk’s path to offering book publishers new opportunities to improve their bottom-line results in a competitive industry.

Publishers Embrace Yurchak Printing’s On-Demand Print Model Powered by Rico

Yurchak Printing, established in 1998 and headquartered in Landisville, Pennsylvania, has distinguished itself as an innovative leader in digital book manufacturing. Specializing in shortrun production, the company offers a comprehensive range of services, including loose-leaf, perfect bound, and case bound books. With a keen eye on technological advancement and customer satisfaction, Yurchak Printing saw an opportunity to help publishers react quickly to market demands for printed books using these differentiators:

  • Pre-production of books to support sales activities allowing the publisher to gauge early demand and sell through
  • Risk reduction in forecasting demand through offering economical production of books in smaller quantities until reaching critical mass
  • Cycle time reduction between one to five days for book production using Ricoh digital printing technology instead of cycle times typically counted in weeks
  • Using specialty and self-publishing trends to unlock segments where customization, personalization, and low quantities can leverage on-demand book production
  • Improved bottom-line results by responding to the demand curve for titles faster and reducing or eliminating warehousing and waste

Getting to the point of supporting small quantities of on-demand printed books required investment to significantly increase efficiency in the printing operation. John Yurchak, the President, explains, “Our objective is to be cost competitive with runs of 1 to 10,000 copies while offering supply chain benefits, including print on-demand, just-in-time manufacturing, test marketing, and back list extension backed with comprehensive warehousing and fulfillment capabilities.” Yurchak Printing found that solution in its long-time partner Ricoh.

The Ricoh Pro VC60000 offered a better economic model than the cut-sheet and monochrome roll-fed printers it replaced while offering outstanding print quality rivaling traditional offset. The new publishing model meant the company needed efficient processes to prepare many smaller book orders and maximize the throughput of the VC60000, which led to RICOH TotalFlow BatchBuilderTM. With BatchBuilder, incoming orders from multiple sources and clients can be grouped using business rules to optimize production based on variables like due date or type of paper. The combined solution from Ricoh allows Yurchak Printing to produce up to 500 orders daily with reliable throughput and uptime, providing publishers with reliability and new ways to approach the book market.

Customer Benefits

For Yurchak Printing the result is enabling efficiencies through on-demand, short-run book production with:

  • A more economical production model (no click charges) with rapid turnaround and printer uptime of 99%
  • The ability to handle a high number of smaller book quantities by combining those into larger batches and fewer print runs using RICOH TotalFlow BatchBuilder
  • Production management, tracking, and efficient production of up to 500 orders daily with more reliable uptime
  • Ability to produce on-demand high quality color books while decreasing turn times