by Piet De Pauw, Head of Marketing, Enfocus
Wihabo was founded in 1986 by two brothers, Willy and Hans Bosch. Located in Geffen, Netherlands, Wihabo is well-known for printing high-volume unique and personalized prints for local and international customers, including Tony’s Chocolonely. From cards, books, flyers, magazines, brochures, packaging and tenders to personalized gift boxes, sleeves and chocolate wraps, they produce a wide range of products in a highly customized workflow to efficiently deliver mass production and specialty prints every day. Today, the family-owned company is one of the most complete digital printers in the Netherlands, with over 90 employees to print over 400,000 impressions daily.
Innovating with HP Indigo Digital Presses
Wihabo is constantly looking for innovative ways to create a wow-factor for their customers. Driven by this vision, they acquired multiple HP Indigo digital presses to add to their offset and flatbed presses; two HP Indigo 7900 presses, an HP Indigo 12000 and the most recent HP Indigo 100K.
"With the investments we make, we always look how we can make our production better, faster and more efficient. For example, with our 100K, we were able to increase productivity by 60% and also save on substrates." - Roel Nikkelen, Operations Manager, Wihabo
The commercial printer uses Ultimate Impostrip® to seamlessly generate the PDF print-ready files for all HP Indigo Digital Presses, including the HP Indigo 100K Digital Press.
Powering the hardware with the right mix of software solutions
Wihabo first looked at Ultimate Impostrip® when they needed an imposition solution for high volume flexible impositions and mark sets for automatic printing. As Wihabo highlights, "the existing long-term relation between HP DFE’s and Ultimate products" sealed the deal. Choosing Ultimate TechnoGraphics’ imposition software was the only logical option for this long-time HP Indigo customer.
Today, Ultimate Impostrip® is one of the tools in a long chain of tasks managed by Enfocus Switch, one of the most popular and versatile workflow automation platforms on the market. A typical incoming job goes through the following steps without any human intervention: Enfocus Switch combines the PDF files with the metadata from their Prodist MIS, triggers Ultimate Impostrip® to create the imposed PDF, creates a JDF and sends it with the imposed PDF to HP Production Center, which sends the job to the DFE.
Future-Proofing Production with Ultimate Impostrip® and Enfocus Switch
Wihabo’s success resides in multiple factors, but the right combination of workflow and hardware technologies is key: ‘’On one hand it is the automation, on the other hand, it is the printing techniques we use. One can’t do without the other to gain all the benefits.’’, adds Roel Nikkelen. When asked about the importance of workflow automation, Wihabo’s Operations Manager answers: ‘’The value we see in workflow automation is that there are zero errors and shorter running times. The 24/7 availability is a very important value: automation never gets ill or goes on a holiday.”
"On one hand it is the automation, on the other hand, it is the printing techniques we use. One can’t do without the other. The value we see in workflow automation is that there are zero errors and shorter running times. Automation never gets ill or goes on a holiday." - Roel Nikkelen, Operations Manager, Wihabo
Today, Wihabo relies on Ultimate Impostrip® and Enfocus Switch to automatically generate the impositions of 500 to 1000 short-run jobs a day. Nikkelen concludes: "In 5 years’ time we want to be the best company in making very complex or unique products a commodity. Without the automation powered by Ultimate Impostrip® and Enfocus Switch, that wouldn’t even be possible."
