Using automation to grow in the printing industry
In 2007, JohnHenry Ruggieri started SunDance with nothing but a 40-inch press and a cutter. Today, his company produces everything from spot UV to cold foil, hot foil, dye cutting, hardcover books, wide format and much more for a wide range of Fortune 500 companies. The one constant in his company’s journey towards growth is automation.
When SunDance discovered Enfocus Switch
From the beginning, SunDance relied on automation to try to reduce the steps in their daily production processes. Once they discovered Enfocus Switch and Enfocus PitStop Pro, they were able to save even more time and money through automation. Today, thanks to a deep integration of Switch with their online store, every job is automatically preflighted and sent to the right printer or sent back to the customer to fix an issue.
“If those products had to come in and actually go through prepress and then get handled and touched to hand off - just to get to printing, we’re talking about hours. Switch takes that and literally flips it around within less than a minute.”
Cami Lawson, Programming Manager at SunDance
Replacing the old school job ticket
One fascinating story JohnHenry told us about their Switch and PitStop workflow automation was about an order they received from a company in Hawaii. The order flew through the completely automated workflow. After preflighting, it went straight to their printing division, made it through bindery and was packaged and shipped to Hawaii the same day. Three days later, the job ticket from the old system showed up! Meanwhile, the order had already arrived at its destination in Hawaii!
“I preach about Switch and some of the automation we've done because I think it's the only way printers are going to survive.”
JohnHenry Ruggieri, president of SunDance
Starting small
When SunDance was created they had no idea of how many tasks they could automate in their day-to-day processes. They bought Switch because it was a scalable solution, giving them the opportunity to start small and gradually expand their automation, creating more modules and workflows as they grew. Today, Switch is used as their ‘hub of automation’.
“We don’t have enough manpower to be able to spend time touching up our orders. I need power, I need air, I need Tharstern and I need Switch. If any of those go down, we normally send our people home. Thankfully that hasn’t happened yet.”
JohnHenry Ruggieri, President of SunDance
